Archive of Our Own

Every wizard knows this to be true — in every expression, there’s a small element of fact. Some cats do have nine lives. Some ladders do open gateways into bad luck. Some seeds can make a tree root in a human stomach. Each old wife’s tale has a story that proves it (almost) right.

So that old one about a dam bursting? That it doesn’t stop until it runs dry?

Well, Esther’s a living testament to that.

After the Battle of Times Square, she doesn’t let go of Ricky’s hand. Not when Robert Moses bursts into a million pieces, not when they check on David and Wally, and not when the gang finally splits up to head him. Ricky’s jacked (Jesus fucking Christ, he’s huge), but the feel of his calloused fingers wrapped around hers is gentle. He’s holding her hand like it might break, she realizes, and her eyes start to water.

Esther manages to hold in it pretty well. They make it past the front doors and a credit card check-in at the hotel lobby. The elevator ride feels like hours, as a family of Canadian tourists crowd in around them and loudly talk about Macy’s sales, but she pulls through there too. One two three four, she counts down in her head, forcing herself to breathe in-sync. It’s only when Ricky shuts the hotel room door behind them that Esther lets herself go.

A broken, half-muffled sob erupts out of her throat. Somewhere, in the back of her head, the scholar in her makes a note. Never heard that sound before; will follow up for cause-and-effect.

The rest of her brain is completely caught up in a tidal wave of emotion unlike any that she’s ever felt before. For half a second, she brings her hand up to her face to try to freeze her tears in action, but no magic erupts from her fingertips. And so, as her knees buckle underneath her, she cries.

“Esther! Hey, Esther!”

Ricky catches her and the feeling of his arms around her is gentle again. Which just sends another sob careening from Esther’s chest.

“Are you okay? Did something happen? Are you hurt?”

His fingers press lightly into her skin, taking stock of wounds that she doesn’t even feel. A blooming purple on her cheek from where she hit the ground, a half-healed gash in her arm from when she almost flew into oblivion. As Ricky’s palm cups her cheek, tilting her face into the light to get a better look at the bruise, she catches his eye and finally, something other than a sob comes out of her mouth.

“You died.”

The word’s like a cantrip of its own. As soon as she says it, a picture of Ricky’s broken body floating freely in the wind takes root in her brain. It’s not so much an act of remembering as of recovery. Esther unearths a memory that she’s not quite sure she’ll ever be able to forget again. Everything about Ricky that’d always looked so sturdy, strong and unbreakable, had changed in the moment she’d realized he was dead. She looked at Ricky’s corpse and saw just how soft (how delicate) he really was.

He died, and she hadn’t been able to save him, and Ricky Matsui could’ve been lost to the world forever.

But he wasn’t. He’s here now, not stopping even for a second in reaction to her words. He’s cradling her, bringing her head to rest in the nape of his neck. He died, and he’s taking care of her; how fucked up is that?

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m here – I’m not going anywhere,” he mutters, repeating assurances. She can feel his lips brush the top of her head.

“You were gone.”

“But I came back. You did too.”

Is it her imagination, or is he crying now too? His (ginormous) pecs heave against her, and Esther realizes it might be a sob.

“I can’t…” She trails off, giving herself a break to take in a deep breath. “I can’t lose you, Ricky.”

The curse is lifted, but that doesn’t save Esther from the outright terror in her own words. In fact, it’s even worse now. At least before, she could pretend that a cantrip or a spell could save her from the grief of a Ricky Matsui-less world. Now, she knows without a doubt that nothing could protect her from that colossal loss.

“You’re not going to,” he whispers like a promise.

She presses her face against him. He smells like sweat and city, and a little like body spray too. More like a regular guy than a champion slash hero slash god.

His body shakes against her.

“When you fell – I thought…”

“Me too.”

His arms don’t wrap any tighter around her, but Esther can still feel the desperation in them. She’s clinging to him in the same way. If they let go now, who’s to say that they wouldn’t go flying off into oblivion all over again?

“And Kugrash —”

That snaps her out of it. Not the crying, but the curling in on herself. Kugrash is dead – he died for her. For them, all of them. And Alejandro did too. And now here’s Ricky, who tries as hard as he can to save the world, two friends down without any answers.

“I know.”

She raises her chin to look up at Ricky’s tear-streaked face. It takes a second, but then she remembers. She can do this now. Reaching up, she cups his cheek with her hand and uses the pad of her thumb to swipe at a tear.

“It’s not fair, is it?”

“I should’ve saved them.”

“No.” She speaks without thinking, but she doesn’t need to. She knows in her bones that Ricky is wrong. “You did everything you could. Both of them knew that.”

There’s a terrible kind of pain in his eyes. It makes her wonder if Ricky’s ever felt this before. Has he always been this lucky, or have there been fires that he was too late to stop? No one can win every time.

She holds onto him as the sobs rock through them both.

“It’s okay. We’re going to be okay, and so are they. Kugrash is – can’t you feel him?”

She feels Ricky nod.

“And Alejandro too. He’s right here.” She touches her collarbone. “In all of us.”

Ricky doesn’t answer that, and he doesn’t need to. They stay like that until Esther’s knees start screaming, half from the scrapes she got in battle and half from the fact that crouching on the ground isn’t exactly comfortable.

“Do you want to lay down?”

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

She takes him by the hand again and leads him onto the bed. It doesn’t matter what they came here to do, or what she might’ve pictured this night to be. She lies next to him, fully-clothed, and curls her body around his.

“You’re here. I’m here. We’re alive.”

The hurt in her chest isn’t going away, and Esther isn’t just feeling grief. She’s breathing hard because she’s afraid. There’s a part of her that’s still on guard, telling her she’s dangerous and wrong to let herself feel so sad. So much. No matter how she tries to rationalize it, the fear’s burrowed so deep into her bones that Esther wonders if it’s going to be a part of her forever.

She doesn’t realize that Ricky’s reading her fear, but soon enough he turns and presses his lips to her forehead.

“We’re going to be okay,” he repeats her words back to her. “It’s okay to cry. You don’t have to afraid.”

It’s like he casts a cantrip on her because, slowly, the pain in her throat subsides.

They stay like that all night, hotel room banging and passion completely forgotten. There’ll be other nights and other rooms. Esther wraps her body around his and holds him until they both stop shaking. Carefully, she waits for his breathing to slow before she lets herself fall asleep. There’s no rush. She lets Ricky’s words reverberate inside her skull: you don’t have to be afraid anymore.

The morning after, they order breakfast in bed. Ricky scarfs down more waffles and whipped cream than she’s ever seen another human being consume. It’s seriously impressive.

Then, they go their separate ways. Ricky wants check on Times Square (“just to make sure everyone’s staying safe,” he promises) and spend New Years with his family. With a hand on the back of his neck, he fumbles forward for a goodbye kiss that Esther happily accepts. It’s awkward and fast and he still tastes like syrup. The quick brush of his lips sends a jolt of energy through her body that makes her head spin.

She doesn’t have a plan. She doesn’t even think about where she’s going, until she snaps back into herself on a train to the Bronx. Within a matter of seconds, she starts to cry for the thirtieth time in twenty-four hours.

This time, she doesn’t stop hiccupping until she makes it to her own front door. As soon as her dad opens it, Esther throws herself at him like she’s a little kid.

Life without sorrow is like life with baby-proofing. It’s Dad holding himself at arms length, knowing that he can’t make himself indispensable to his daughter. It’s Dad never jay-walking or drinking or smoking, or giving himself any kind of risk factor. It’s living with a dad who knows that, if anything happened to him, his daughter would be completely destroyed. And then she would destroy the world as they knew it.

There was no easy solution to growing up like that – nothing about being a Sinclair’s been easy. Esther’s always known that if (when) she lost her dad, she’d lose herself too. So she made herself strong, never relying on him too much. Never more than she relied on herself.

Now, for the first time she can remember, she can cry on her dad’s shoulder, and not be afraid that she’s going to burn the world to ash.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her dad murmurs into her hair. He rubs her back like he did when she was a small, and it only makes Esther hiccup. She missed that. Missed feeling the certainty of falling apart in her dad’s arms.

“You did it.”

How can she answer that? That really, Esther didn’t do anything at all? For all of her books and magic, every explored avenue and exhausted lead, it took a magical rat bastard to free her? And that now, that rat bastard was dead? Oh, and that he was the one who took Mom away, but also the one who gave her back?

God, her life really is one bizarro tragicomedy.

“Can I come in?”

Dad ushers her in. He keeps the kiddy gloves on, sitting her down at the kitchen table with a steaming hot mug of coffee and homemade muffins. When she looks across the room, she sees the pictures he has up on the coffee table.

They’re all of her. Esther at prom, with pink streaks in her hair and a fairy princess dress. Esther at NYU grad, her hair shaved off and mouth puckered with black lipstick. Esther in Grammercy Park, posing with her key. Nu-uh, she remembers saying, playfully pushing her dad away when he tried to grab it. This place is all mine.

She wonders if the old prints could come back now. The ones she remembers from way, way back. Her mom and dad’s first picture with her, a baby entirely bundled in a blue blanket. A goofy shot of them in Paris, her dad holding Gabriela bridal-style in front of the Eiffel Tower. Gabriela’s own high school graduation picture, the cap fitted snugly against her curls. They were all boxed away eons ago – to protect Esther, obviously. Couldn’t have any evidence of dear old mom; it might actually let Esther grieve.

Her eyes fill up again. Fuck’s sake — her throat’s getting really sore with all this crying.

Her dad reaches forward to touch her wrist, making as if to interrupt her, but then stops himself.

“Sorry. I’m just… not used to this.” He looks at her, gaze intent. “It’s safe, now? For you to feel this?”

“Yeah,” Esther replies around the lump in her throat. “The curse is broken.” She smiles weakly. “Which means I’ve got like fifteen years of tears to get out.”

“Ah.” His hand stays on her wrist. “Good luck with that.”

“Any advice?”

“Tissues and eye drops. They’ll make all the difference.”

Esther snorts out a laugh.

“Sweetie, does this mean…”

Fuck. Right.

“Mom’s back. She’s Mom again. Grandma too.” She swallows around the scratch in her throat. “They’re in my apartment.”

Have been since the battle of Times Square. Which is an epically shitty thing to do, Esther understands. Leaving your newly un-cursed mom and grandma alone for the night in your apartment while you’re trying to get laid has bad idea written all over it.

If hell’s real, that’s totally where Esther’s going.

“Are they… ?”

Her dad’s face is red. Esther realizes he’s about to cry.

“Yeah, they’re okay.” She turns her hand over to hold his. “Do you want to come see them?”

He can’t even answer – just nods. She thinks back to Ricky’s unbreathing body in Times Square and understands, in all the ways she didn’t before.

“Come on. I’ll grab a to-go mug.”

They get up together. As Esther tries to move towards the kitchen, her dad holds on tight to her hand.

“Baby, I’m —” His voice catches. “I was so worried.”

“I know. Me too.”

“I love you,” he says, and Esther’s never heard it from her dad like this before. No hesitancy or fear behind the words. Just the love.

Fuck it. There’s no rush. She hugs her dad tighter than she’s ever hugged him before and doesn’t plan on letting go for a long, long time.

“Love you too.”

Esther makes herself a secret spot and doesn’t tell a single soul. Not Sofia, not Ricky, and not even her parents.

One rainy January Sunday, she’d gotten up hours before the sun to visit Thompkins Square Park. It felt different, after everything that’d happened – the smell of it didn’t put a pit into her stomach. With her eyes on the street in front of her, she’d placed a gold banded bracelet on the concrete next to the manhole and compelled it to grow.

The bracelet didn’t turn into anything big or fancy. Just an ankle-high statue of a rat, shining gold in the early morning light, standing guard over the park.

She visits her makeshift Kugrash memorial every week. After the first time, she starts bringing things. Not flowers – he didn’t seem like a flowers guy. But trinkets. Little snacks that she imagines the sewar rats take as soon as she’s gone.

Sometimes, she cries. Other times, she smiles, and tells this secret statue about how everybody else is doing. And every once and awhile, she gets angry. Like everything else, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

This time, it’s a sunny Tuesday morning before work, and she’s got this hard lump in her throat that won’t go away no matter how hard she clears it. She looks at this little statue of this little man, who did so much damage and tried to weigh with good, and thinks about forgiveness.

“Mom’s doing okay now, you know. Her and my dad are having a hard time but that’s – it’s been a long time. It’s normal. I can’t imagine trying to fit back into my life after all of that… if you hadn’t stopped me…”

The rat stares back at her in complete silence.

“Grandma’s a little better. Maybe it’s the amount of time that’s passed, I don’t know. She doesn’t talk much, but she’s happy. I think. She bakes a lot.”

Nothing, no answers. Esther heaves a sigh.

“I could’ve done it myself, you know. Broken the curse. I know you were on your own hero’s journey, or path of redemption, or whatever, but I worked so hard. Literally, I spent my entire life trying to find the answer.”

It’s ugly to say the words out loud, but here, where nobody else can find her, Esther doesn’t care. And maybe that’s Kugrash’s greatest act of kindness to her – giving her somewhere to pour out every ugly emotion and asking for nothing back.

“And then you just came in, with that crown, and everything I’d been working towards was totally irrelevant. Poof! Like it never even mattered.”

Kugrash’s statue doesn’t blink.

“I don’t like easy fixes. And that was the easiest fix ever.” Her throat’s really starting to hurt now, and her eyes start to smart. Keep it together, Esther.

“It was you. You’re the one who did this to my mom, you’re the one who hurt her – and I couldn’t even save her. You did. Do you know how colossally unfair that is?”

She’s glad the statue can’t say anything back. She can’t imagine anything that any Kugrash, real or imagined, could say to fix what she’s feeling. Esther takes a shaky breath in, and then another, trying to balance herself.

“I hate you a little bit, you know. I think I’m always going to. You took so much away from me.” He gave some back, too, but she doesn’t know how to balance that. Whether self-sacrifice weighs the scales enough in the opposite. Whether that’s even her decision to make. 

But all the same, she reaches forward to touch the top of Kugrash’s head, giving it a soft little pat. “Thank you.”

She tries to clear her throat.

“I wish I’d known you better. Everyone else – they miss you, a lot. Sofie especially. I should bring them here – should’ve done it a long time ago.” Kugrash stays frozen, but Esther doesn’t need to hear his voice to know his answer. She runs through all the data in her head, and nods towards the inanimate object in front of her. “Yeah, it’s time.”

She never knows how to leave these chats with the Kugrash statue. Whether there’s actually anyone to say goodbye to. But today, she feels magic in the air around her. And even if there’s not anybody around, there’s something in the air.

“I’ll bring them by.”

She knows that he’s just a statue, that Kugrash is literally a part of the fabric of space and time now, but Esther swears the golden rat winks at her. And even through the anger and the tears, she smiles back at this stupid statue.

“Just be patient, okay?”

Even though she doesn’t bang Ricky’s brains out that first night, they do eventually have sex and it’s awesome. Not like, in a way that’s earth-shattering or mind-blowing or super hot, but none of that matters. It’s awkward and weird and there’s a lot of talking it through. Ricky tries too hard to be gentle, she tries too hard to play it cool, and it’s all a mess of limbs and is this okays. Esther wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Until she starts to cry.

It happens after, while Ricky’s in the shower and she’s wrapped up in a way-too-big T-shirt that she steals from his drawer. One second, she’s half asleep, blinking bleary-eyed at a poster about workplace safety that Ricky has in his bedroom. The next, she’s sitting and curling up, sobbing against her knees.

That’s how he finds her. He almost drops the towel, rushing over as soon as he sees, and Esther’s breathing gets even worse.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Oh God, did I do something? Did I make you uncomfortable? Did someone – did something happen?”

He looks around the room wildly, like there might be a monster skulking around. Even as she tries to interrupt, Esther can’t get a word in edge-wise until he’s done.

“No it’s just – I can’t believe I waited this long!”

Silence stretches out between them. She thinks Ricky’s probably processing what she just said – which, honestly, is fair.  

“What?”

“I wanted this for so long, and I couldn’t let myself, and it’s so, so stupid, I know, but I’m just thinking about all the times I ignored you when I just wanted to jump you.” She forces herself to take a deep inhale. “I wasted so much time!”

When she looks up, Ricky’s got his eyebrows furrowed and his forehead all wrinkled. His (humongous) chest is also gleaming with shower water – and she feels like a total horndog for noticing through her tears.

“So… nothing happened? You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just having a moment.” He sinks onto the bed next to her and instantly, they’re reaching out for each other. It’s like magnets, the way his body fits perfectly around hers. Not like anything she’s ever felt before. “I just… I suck.”

“What?! No way. You’re like, the best person I know.” Esther takes their twined hands and kisses his lightly. “And you had some pretty freaking good reasons for waiting.”

“I know. Doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Are you, like, sad? Or mad?”

“Both, I think.”

“And you cry when you’re mad?”

She shrugs.

“Turns out I cry about a lot of things.”

“Huh. I think I do too.”

She laughs.

“I like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’re cute when you cry.”

A beat of silence falls in between them, and Esther realizes what she just said.

“Shit, that sounds evil. I didn’t mean it like that!”

She waits for his face to drop, for Ricky to get weirded out. Instead, his expression twists into pantomime of a sob.

“Even like this?” His voice shakes like he’s pretending he’s got something in his throat.

“More than ever. Wow. Just take me now.”

Before she can even make a move, Ricky leans forward and pushes her gently against the bed, face still grimacing.

“As long as you don’t mind all the water and snot.”

“Gross!”

She doesn’t mean it and, to emphasis that, she pushes up to kiss his cheek, right where a tear might fall. When she pulls away, Ricky’s smiling again, and his eyes are all soft.

Her stomach does that weird swooping thing it does whenever he looks at her like that. Up and down, like she’s a teenage girl talking to Jonathan Taylor Thomas — or whoever’s cool now. Justin Bieber?

“I’m happy you waited.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. If you, uh, ‘jumped me’ right away, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten to know each other like this.”

“What?”

He ducks his head.

“Just – sometimes people don’t like how I am, when I start to talk. They look at me and see me differently than I actually am, I guess. And if we’d hooked up right away, maybe you would’ve too.”

“Ricky,” Esther says, “I only wanted to jump your bones once I realized how awesome you are. All of this?” She gestures down at his body, taking careful effort not to look at it. “It’s just like, whatever.”

He laughs.

“Whatever?”

“Mhm. I could live without it. But you,” she pauses to press another light kiss to his jawline. “I was obsessed with you for like, a year, because you’re you.”

“Huh.”

Esther thinks he’s going to kiss her now, and she closes her eyes obligingly. It takes a few seconds of quiet before she realizes nope, wrong move. When she looks back at him, he’s smiling again, from ear to ear.

“You were obsessed with me?”

She thinks about every time she turned him down, every sweet comment and gentle hand-brush that she danced away. Always for the greater good, always so that she didn’t transform into a literal monster. For a brief instant, the instinct is still there to deflect what she just said. To pretend that she didn’t mean it, to turn it into a joke. But she doesn’t have to anymore. She can give Ricky her whole heart, and he can break it if he wants, and the sun will still come up tomorrow. Her eyes well up again.

“Ricky, the second thing I did after Kugrash broke my family curse was chase you down and grab your butt. Yeah. I’d say obsessed.”

“That was pretty intense.”

“I’m pretty intense.”

“I like that.” He leans down and bumps his nose against hers. It’s so sweet that, even as Esther’s crying, she’s smiling.

Water drips from his hair onto her face and, after a few seconds of enjoying his proximity, she scrunches up her face.

“You should probably dry up.”

“Huh? Oh yeah.” Ricky runs a hand through his hair, which still looks stupidly perfect even when it’s soaking wet, and flicks some more water in her direction.

“Stop! I’m already wet enough already!”

Ricky gets this big grin on his face again, and Esther takes another beat to process what she said.

“Oh my god, get your mind out of the gutter!” His expression doesn’t change. “I meant from crying! See?”

As she gestures at her face, Ricky pushes her back onto the bed, and Esther realizes that his wet hair’s the least of her problems.

She plants trees with Sofia and, with the flick of her wrist, turns seeds into saplings. They give the deer some shade; somewhere to hide when the world gets too loud. And by the time Sofia breaks into tears, Esther is right there with her, in shuddering gasps that only stabilize when they hug.  

They sit with warm mugs of tea between them, after, and it’s only in the quiet glow of the sunset that Sofia breaks the silence.

“How’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know.” Sofia gestures at her face, hand swiping over her eyes in a familiar gesture. “Stop yourself from feeling.”

Oh.

“Sof…” She starts, taking a moment to wrap her fingers tighter around the mug. The question sends a piercing pain through Esther and she feels her eyes well up again. “That’s not what I did. It wasn’t about stopping myself from grieving. It was about controlling everything.”

“Control,” Sofia repeats. “I’m not so good at that.”

“You don’t need to be. That kind of control, it’s not right.”

Esther fixes her gaze on the woods in front of her. No matter how long it’s been, it’s not easy to open up. Even to Sofie. One wrong word, and Esther’s still half-convinced she’ll go flying into nothingness.

“It’s like – you can’t let yourself feel anything. I’m – I was the Fury of Sorrow, right? But so many emotions can turn into sorrow. It’s not like a tasting menu. You can’t pick and choose.”

“Not like tapas?”

Esther snorts at that, and it makes a gross sound. Halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“Definitely not. I could never let myself feel too much of anything. Too much anger? Anger turns into hurt, which turns into sadness. Too much happiness? Perfect happiness can’t exist forever. Eventually, the scale tips to the other side.”

“That sounds awful.”

Esther nods.

“It was. But it didn’t feel like that, most of the time – because if I felt awful about it, who’s to say that isn’t sorrow?”

“So you just went through life…” There’s quiet in the moment that Sofie searches for the world. “Totally numb?”

“I mean yeah, mostly. I didn’t do it on my own. I was just a kid when my mom, you know. Raged out. And then my dad brought me to the Chantry.”

“Alejandro helped?”

That’s the thing about Sofia Lee. She’s much more insightful than most people.

“Yeah. He warded me and taught me some cantrips I could do whenever I felt too much of anything.” Esther barks out another half-laugh. “I guess I was kind of lucky, in a way. My mom’s curse started a little later. My dad didn’t have to worry about toddler tantrums and me crying over lost toys.”

“You made it through being a teen, though. That’s intense.”

“Wasn’t easy. Didn’t really have a regular experience. No dating, no extracurriculars that involved any kind of competition. Couldn’t apply to the colleges I really wanted to get into in case I got rejected.”

“Shit.” Esther feels Sofia’s knee knock against hers. “That’s fucked up.”

“Super fucked up.”

There’s another moment of quiet between them again.

“I don’t want to feel nothing,” Sofia mutters.

Esther turns back from the treeline now to look at her. Sofia’s all red in the face again, just as tearful and snotty as Esther feels. And this is something she’s never really been able to do before – to share someone’s pain without shutting it off.

“I don’t think you’re at risk of that. You’re like, the most sensitive person I know – it’s awesome.”

“Me crying about everything’s awesome?”

“Yeah, girl. That’s literally living life to its fullest.”

Sofia pauses.

“Never thought about it like that.”

Esther reaches forward to hug Sofia again. She’d never been a touchy-feely person before but now, with her mom and her grandma and Ricky and Sofie, she can’t get enough.

“Not feeling anything isn’t good. It’s empty and it’s hollow and it makes you wonder if you’re really even a person or capable of living a life. Trust me.”

She hears Sofia sniffle.

“It – I miss him so much.”

“I know, but taking your feelings away wouldn’t change that. It would just make you miss even more stuff.”

“I guess.”

She can hear the doubt in Sofia’s voice, and does all that she can to let Sofie know that she’s here. She squeezes her a little tighter, knocking their bodies together.

“Looking at a picture of Dale and feeling nothing… trust me. There’s nothing worse than that.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath at that from Sofie.

“I dunno if I could ever look at Dale and feel nothing.”

“Yeah,” Esther replies. “I don’t think so.”

Their eyes meet and, for a brief moment, Sofie smiles.

“You’re a good friend. Not so good at pep talks, though.”

“You want optimism, you go to Em or Rowan. It’s pure realism over in Esther’s corner.”

“Esther’s corner,” Sofie repeats and then starts to giggle. Her laugh sounds strained, but it’s a laugh, and so Esther’s counting it as a win. “That should be your talk show.”

“I’d be a terrible host. Worse than Ellen. And I’d probably get cancelled for kicking Dr. Phil’s ass.”

“He’s got some good tips!”

Esther doesn’t need to say anything. She just catches Sofia’s eye and again, Sofia descends into laughter.

“Or not.”

Point made, she goes back to hugging Sofia’s side.

“Do you want to talk about him?”

The laughter stops abruptly.

“What, Dale?”

“Yeah.” Esther nods.

“I thought we already were.”

“Not like that. Do you want to tell me about him?”

She thinks about when her mom was in the park, how desperately she used to ask her dad for stories. She wanted to hear everything about the Gabriela she lost – and it seemed like, when her dad talked about her, it was good for him too. His face would light up. It didn’t matter how many times Esther heard the same stories – she lived for the moments that he’d talk about her mom and the rest of the world would melt away.

“Oh. Yeah, actually. Okay.”

Sofia finally wraps her arm around Esther and squeezes her. She doesn’t need to telepathy to know that Sofie’s saying thanks, in all the ways that she can and can’t.

They sit like that until their tea gets cold, and after that, Esther follows Sofia home to make more. The longer Sofie talks about Dale, the more excited she gets. Her voice gets higher and higher, her cheeks pinker and pinker. It’s like he’s breathing life back into her, all the way from the afterlife. There’s a sharp beauty in it, and it pierces Esther through.

Balancing everything’s harder than it was before. Sorrow sneaks up on her, pummeling her in the gut at random intervals. When she’s listening to a song on the radio, or passing by Times Square, or having dinner with her family. Sometimes, it stops her body all together, and she has to force her heart to jumpstart again.

Once, she cries so hard that she teleports herself to Kingston, who makes her sit down while he checks her breathing.

“There’s nothing medically wrong here, as far as I can tell.”

“Then why won’t it stop?” Esther wails. She realizes she sounds more like a bratty teen than the badass head of a magical institute but, out of everyone in the world, Kingston won’t judge.

“I don’t —”

“Kingston, I cried about a Masterchef Junior elimination for an hour last night. Ana and Amelia straight up teleported out of my place to get away from all the snot.”

He frowns at that. Esther can’t tell if he’s grossed out or just feeling sorry for her.

“Now, that doesn’t sound so bad. It can be really disappointing, watching somebody lose like that.”

“The kid wasn’t even crying. He thanked the judges for the opportunity.” Oh shit. Here come the waterworks again.

“Hey.” He hands Esther a tissue that she didn’t even see him grab. It’s crazy, what a Vox Populi can do. “That kid’ll go on to have a great career.”

“But it could’ve been even better if he won! He wanted to start a restaurant next door to horse stables!” She thinks of that little boy’s dream crashing and burning, and feels a sob rise in her throat.

“Okay, alright.” Kingston pats her on the back. It reminds her of her dad a little; he used to rub little circles on Esther’s back whenever she got too worked up about something. A bad grade, a school yard bully. There there, honey. They can’t touch you. You’re worlds above it all.

She’s not so above anything now.

“Honestly, and I don’t mean to cause any offence, but have you talked to anybody about this?” Before she can answer, he holds up his hand. “I don’t mean Ricky or Sofia or Em. I’m talking like, a professional.”

“Not lately, no.” Not for a few years. When Esther was a teenager, her dad had found her a doctor in Manhattan, a half-fae woman who charged an insane amount for Esther to sit on a chair to talk before she realized that the whole problem was that Esther couldn’t talk. As it turned out, it was almost impossible to work through trauma when you couldn’t actively process your own emotions. In the end, the doctor taught Esther some useful cantrips for mitigating any soul-crushing teenage angst and a few potions to “sooth her soul,” and that was that.

But now, she could speak to someone, and she’d actually be able to talk.

“I think that’s a good idea. There are doctors out there, like me, who work in the Unsleeping City and will help.” Kingston rubs the back of his neck. “When I was going through some stuff of my own, talking it through really helped.”

She thinks of what Ricky told her about Liz. Kingston’s Sunday walks, trying to win back what he’d lost so many years ago.

“You’re right.”

Kingston smiles, soft and self-assured.

“I know I am.”

Esther can’t help but let out a laugh. It’s these people – the group of them have gone through so much, and still, they’re capable of so much joy that, sometimes, it overwhelms her.

“How’s Liz?”

The smile freezes on his face, his brows furrowing like he’s confused.

“How’d you know about – Ricky.”

“Technically, I think it was Pete who told Ricky.”

When Kingston shakes his head, it’s less in frustration than it is in fondness. Like he’s saying those damn kids without saying anything at all.

“She’s good. Working on a case about some of the stuff at the Met right now, trying to replace a genuine artifact with a good fake.”

“She’s an art forger now?”

“No!” Kingston’s laugh is a loud, booming sound that sounds a shot of warmth straight through Esther. “There are so many cultural artifacts in the museums here, so many objects that work magic, and they’re just sitting there. Liz is working on getting them back to the people they belong to without the big money guys stepping in.”

“Oh, shit. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah. She’s pretty amazing.” For a second, Kingston’s smile reminds her of Ricky. Wide and unassuming. “And Ricky?”

“Also amazing.”

“I figured. He’s a good kid.” The easy smile on Kingston’s face stays. “He’s a pretty good listener too, you know.”

“Yeah, I do. I just don’t want him to feel like it’s his job, you know?”

“Esther, he’s loved you for about as long as I’ve known him. I really doubt he’d feel like that.”

She shrugs, suddenly self-conscious.

“I guess.”

She doesn’t know how to say what it is that she means. That sometimes, it’s not just crying. She gets this bone-deep rage that mixes with sadness to fill her to the brim, and she doesn’t know what to do with all of that. Where to put it. She thinks of everything she has now, and everything she didn’t have before, and everything this stupid curse cost, and it makes her want to scream and never stop.

Kingston looks at her and must see something, because he puts a warm hand on her shoulder and holds her there.

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. You’re processing twenty years of emotion at once. It’s okay to cut yourself some slack.”

Esther isn’t quite sure if she believes him, not entirely, but he’s saying all the right things. The ugliness in her gut relaxes a little. 

“I’ll try to do that.”

“Yeah, you better.” He claps his hand on her back before reaching down to offer her a tissue. “Come on. I’m taking you out for coffee.”

“Right now?”

“Unless you’ve got other plans.”

As she looks at him, the offered tissue in his palm, Esther gets a brief flash of Alejandro that sends an acute stab of pain into her chest. The flicker of his face makes her smile as her eyes sting.

“I’m free.”

A group of them start doing movie nights at the Chantry once a month. Usually, it’s her, Ricky, Pete, and Sofia, but sometimes Kingston or Em stop by and, once in awhile, Rowan too.

Esther’s pick is Titanic. One movie among the dozens that she had never let herself watch, worried that it would break her heart. When Sofia hears that she’s never seen it, she acts like Esther just said that she’s never had a sip of water in her life.

“Oh my God! You’ll die, I’m telling you. If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”

“That’s The Notebook, hun,” Rowan pipes up.

“Oh. Right. I’m the king of the world?”

“That’s it,” Peter answers through a mouthful of popcorn. “Just wait. Young Leo’s gonna change your life.”

At a certain point about halfway through, Esther starts to cry and doesn’t stop till the credits roll. Luckily, she’s not the only one. Sofia sobs loud enough that they have to turn the subtitles on to catch everything, and Ricky white-knuckles a pillow while he sniffles next to her. Even Kingston and Rowan lose it at the old couple holding each other in bed as the water rushes in under their door. All in all, it’s a total hit.

After the others leave, talking loudly about whether or not they both could’ve survived on the door, Esther sinks back onto the couch next to Ricky. He turns to her instantly, still clutching the pillow to his (super buff) chest.

“If that was us in the ocean, I just want you to know that I totally would’ve let you have the door.”

She laughs for a long, long time. Like she hasn’t laughed in a long time. And when she finally catches her breath, he’s still staring at her with this beautifully earnest eyes. She can’t help but reach forward to squeeze his (incredibly toned) arm.

“Ricky, sweetie, I’m a pretty powerful magic user. If that were us, we’d be teleported to San Tropez before you even got your hair wet.”

“Huh. That’s true.”

“You’re not the only hero around, you know.”

She’s joking, but Ricky’s doesn’t smile. Instead, he frowns, and covers her hand with his own.

“I never wanted to – that’s not what I meant. Does it seem like that? I know you can totally save yourself. And me. And like, everyone else.”

“Hey – Ricky, wait.” She laces their fingers together. “I was joking.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just looks down at their interlaced fingers. Esther can read the embarrassment on his face.

“I know you know that I’m not helpless,” she explains. I know you know. Esther’s confusing herself, now.

There’s something else in his frown, too. A line drawn down his face that she’s never seen before.

“Do you think I did the right thing? Giving up the questing blade?”

“Oh.”

The truth is, Esther doesn’t know what to say to that. She knows what the right thing is to her, and what that means, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for Ricky. She’s never been divinely ordained to protect New York City. It was just a choice she made, a long time ago. Probably before she even really knew what she was choosing.

“Yeah. It’s a dumb question – sorry.”

“What? No, it’s not dumb. Not at all.” She squeezes lightly on Ricky’s hand. He thinks that a lot, she’s come to know. That he’s dumb, or being dumb, and saying something dumb. Esther wants to punch out the first person who ever made Ricky Matsui think he was anything less than.

“I don’t know if it was the right thing. I don’t know if there is a ‘right’ thing. But I do know you changed Sofia’s life. Dale’s too, obviously. You did good for them, and that’s right by me.”

Ricky’s face is still drawn, and Esther wants so badly to reach out to touch him, to smooth out the lines with the tips of her fingers, but she holds back to let him speak.

“But the city. What if the city needs me?”

“Sweetie, if the city needs you, you’ll be there. Like you’ve always been. You were its champion a long, long time before someone put an axe into your hand.”

Sweetie, slips out so easily from her mouth, and it takes a beat for her to realize that she’s never called anyone that before. Huh.

“Yeah.” This time, her words seem to have some effect. He lifts his head a little and looks at her again. And, even though the lines are still there, they soften when their eyes meet.

“I didn’t bring you to my mom and my grandma because you had a big shiny axe. I brought you because I knew you’d be there when I needed you. You’d save the day if anything went wrong.”

He just looks at her.

“If things got rough – if I looked at them for too long, if they said something or did something and it hurt – I knew I could just look at you. And you’d make me smile.”

He doesn’t interrupt her, but Esther feels his hand move. He starts thumbing soft little circles into the back of her hand, and it feels so nice that, in a flash, she gets all teary-eyed. Go fucking figure.

“Questing blade or not, you’re still Ricky Matsui. And Ricky Matsui’s a big fucking hero. Who would totally give me the door from Titanic if we were there.” Esther grins at him. “I’d still save you from hypothermia though.” 

He ducks his head, but this time, it’s to laugh.

“Thanks.”

“Any time.”

They sit like that for a few minutes, in a comfortable silence that Esther’s only felt at the Chantry before. Fingers laced together, hands squeezing every so often. She watches the blank TV screen in front of her and, in the reflection, sees Ricky doing the same thing.

“Hey, Esther?”

“Mm?”

“It’s cool that we can talk like this.” In the screen, she sees him run his free hand through his hair. “I’ve never really been able to talk about this kind of stuff with anyone. I mean, there’s the Johns, and Emiko, but they don’t really know about… everything.”

Just when she thought that she was over those crazy Ricky Matsui butterflies, Esther’s entire body starts to tingle the way it did when they kissed for the first time. She thinks about what Kingston said, about Ricky being a good listener. About how Kingston opened him back up to Liz after years of hurt. How her dad and her mom are trying again.

“Yeah. I mean, I had Alejandro, but it wasn’t really safe to talk like this.” She clears her throat around the lump that’s started to form there. “I feel safe with you, I guess.”

She sees him look at her in the TV reflection and a real, certified, Ricky Matsui smile starting to form on his lips.

“I feel safe with you too.” Oh God. Her stomach drops and swoops, like she’s falling. She feels her lips stretch into a big, silly smile.

“Cool.”

“Yeah, cool.”

Before she can say anything else, Ricky leans across the couch and wraps himself around her. He presses his head to her chest, right across her sternum, where he can probably hear the thump-thump-thump of her heart.

“You’re my hero, you know.”

“I better be.” She tries to be flippant, but his words settle inside of her with golden light. Ricky seems to sense that, probably from the way her heart’s stuttering, and brushes his lips against her jaw.

There goes her stomach again.

“Come on. If you like hypotheticals so much, I’ve got another Titanic scenario we can try out,” Esther offers. She detangles her hand from his to run it through his hair.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. You’ll just need a pen and paper.”

As their eyes meet again, and Ricky smiles at her, she knows without a doubt that she’s telling the truth. That she feels safe with him – that she is safe with him.

Esther makes a silent promise to herself that he’ll be safe with her too.

Before she brings the others to Kugrash, she knows that she needs to talk to her mom.

They’re getting there, her and Gabriela. Her and Mom. Finding their way back to each other, down the path from mother to curse to mother again. It’s easier now that her parents are back together, existing in careful harmony in their apartment. They move around each other just like how Esther remembers them from her childhood. In orbit, her dad twisting her mom’s hair around his fingers whenever there’s a brief lull in movement.

It’s better now, too, that Esther’s seen her mom melt down since Thompson Square Park. Gabriela broke an old vase a few weeks ago and cursed up a storm, shouting about family heirlooms and her rotten luck, – and nothing happened. The world didn’t end. She didn’t freeze or disappear. Gabriela got mad and the world kept turning.

Obviously, Esther had burst into tears after that. Big, ugly, heaving sobs, like the ones from the Battle of Times Square. And again, nothing bad happened. Gabriela approached her cautiously and then held her, and Esther got to cry in her mom’s arms like she was a little kid. Her mom could rage, she could be sad, and they could still be them.

Armed with that knowledge, and a healthy cup of morning coffee, she drags her mom back towards the park. Gabriela, to her credit, doesn’t seem all that nervous about it. If anything, she keeps staring at Esther like she’s afraid Esther’s going to fall apart.

Which – to be fair – she just might.

“This is it,” she announces when they finally make it to her spot. She can see the gleaming of Kugrash’s golden head in front of her, half-hidden by the bush in front of it.

“This street?”

“Yeah.” Esther pulls her mom forward by the hand until finally, they’re in front of a manhole. Which really, isn’t the nicest place for a memorial, but it’s where Kugrash would’ve wanted that. She holds onto her mom’s hand and watches for her to react.

Gabriela’s always worn her heart on her sleeve. Esther remembers that, even from her childhood. Her mom doesn’t mince words or keep secrets. When she’s mad, then the entire neighbourhood knows it. When she’s sad, she retires to her bed like a dramatic Victorian lady. And when she’s happy, it’s like she brings out the sun, because she makes everybody else can feel it too.

Right now, Gabriela looks like she’s confused, mostly. Her lips tug down into a frown and Esther can see her eyes turning red, but there’s relief in the set of her shoulders too. She gets it. Kugrash is like the supervillain and the superhero in their stories – maybe more of a villain in Mom’s. She always knew this wouldn’t be easy.

“You made this?”

Esther nods.

“He did a lot of good in the end, for me and my friends.”

She watches her mom’s lips curve up slightly.

“Bruce and good. Two words I never expected to hear together.”

Gabriela drops Esther’s hand and approaches the statue, but Esther doesn’t go along. She gives her mom some space, following her with her eyes.

“I can’t believe it was him.”

“Me neither.”

She knows that they’re talking about two different things. Esther can’t square the Kugrash she knew with the man who screwed her mother over so badly and deeply that she lost everything. She can’t see the hero she knew as a villain in her own story. Gabriela can’t understand how the Bruce Kugrich she knew would sacrifice himself for her. She can’t see the villain in her story as a hero.

It’s all just completely fucked.

Gabriela’s hand skims over the top of Kugrash’s head, coming to rest on it. She lets out what sounds like a sob – but, after a few seconds, Esther realizes is a laugh.

“My curse worked. He really did turn into a rat.”

“A big rat guy, yeah. Or like, a small-sized guy, but a big rat.”

Esther fumbles with her words, unsure of how to respond to her mom. It’s not the first time. Learning how to be a daughter again is just as hard as learning to let herself feel pain.

“Good. It sounds like it helped.”

In the sunlight, Esther can see the tear tracks down her mom’s face.

“It made a big difference. You would’ve liked Kugrash. Bruce, whatever. He helped a lot of people.”

“Oh, I always liked Bruce,” Gabriela answers. “That’s why I didn’t just kill him.”

Figures. A powerful wizard like her mom turning the guy who ruined her life into a rat and not anything worse was an act of mercy.

“He helped with the Occult Society, sometimes. A couple times, he’d find a scared kid who didn’t understand what he was seeing, and Kugrash brought him to us. That’s how we got Sofie.” Her voice breaks on Sofia’s name, and Esther starts to cry too.

“He saved you,” Esther manages to say through the crack in her voice.

Fucking Kugrash.

Gabriela extends her arm out and, just like a kid, Esther moves towards it. Her mom hugs her and Esther squeezes her back, and this statute of Kugrash is there too, like some kind of weird group hug with a gold statue of a rat man. They stay like that for a minute, and then two, and then as long as it takes for Esther and Gabriela’s twin sobbing to calm down.

Eventually, when Esther can breathe again, she pulls away far enough to look her mom in the eye.

“I come here whenever I feel like I’m out of control.”

“Out of control?”

“Yeah.” Esther breathes in and it catches. Her mom reaches up and brushes Esther’s hair back from her face.

“Oh, sweetie.”

“I just – I get so sad, sometimes. And mad, really mad. And I don’t want people to like, freak out, if I lose my shit a little, and so I come here.”

Gabriela cradles her head against her. It’s déjà vu, from being a kid and scraping her knee and letting her mom take care of her. Esther’s shoulder start to heave again.

“Nobody’s going to freak out if you lose your shit. You’re entitled to it. We all are.” She strokes Esther’s hair. “It’s okay to be hurting. Doesn’t make you any less strong.”

“It feels like I shouldn’t be, or I can’t be. I don’t want to be bitter or live in the past — but he did this to you, Mama. And now he’s dead, and I can’t even work it out with him about it because he’s gone. And everyone else is sad, and I don’t want them to hate me because I’m —”

“I know. He knows it too, and I bet Bruce would want you to yell at him too. Tell you to get it all out.” Esther feels her press a kiss to her head. “Holding it in, talking to things that can’t talk back. It’s not going to help, my love.”

“I know.”

“You can talk to me. And I know you’ve got your friends, and your boy — ” Esther groans at that, “What? He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

“We haven’t defined the relationship yet.”

“That’s crazy. He’s your boyfriend.” Her hand goes back to the top of Esther’s head. “Your boyfriend and everybody else wants to hear what you have to say. They love you. They’re not going to hate you.” She lifts Esther’s head softly. “Listen to me. You’ve got to own what you’re feeling. It’s okay to be angry at someone who fucked up your life. As long as you don’t let it consume you.”

Through the blur of tears, Esther can make out the smile on her mom’s face. Small and soft, maybe bitter or maybe just wistful.

She’s beautiful.

Esther detaches one arm from her mom and lets it rest on top of Kugrash’s head, right next to her mom’s.

“It won’t.”

She thinks of Ricky, Sofia, and Kingston. She thinks of Ana and Amelia. She thinks of her parents, and her grandmother, and Alejandro, and Kugrash. And yeah, she’s pissed. But there’s love there too, so big and powerful that Esther isn’t sure if she could ever lose it. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s normal.

She really regrets giving Sofia all that emotional advice now when really, she doesn’t know the first thing about normal feelings.

Gabriela presses one more kiss to her head before letting Esther go.

“Now, speaking of. Should we give him a piece of our minds?”

Esther barks out a laugh.

“You want to yell at a giant rat statue?”

“Hell yeah, I do. And don’t even try to pretend you don’t want to. I can read it on your face.”

Still laughing, Esther takes a step back and parrots her mom. Together, in the quiet early morning of Thomas Square Park, they give Bruce Kugrich slash Kugrash the tongue-lashing of his life.

And somewhere out there, Esther swears she can feel him smile.

The bubble bursts after a long, frustrating day with the Occult Society. Alejandro’s notes are written in chicken scratch and only half-finished, since he liked to keep as much as he could up in his head. Which might’ve seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that she’s his successor, Esther kind of wants to cuss him out for it.

So there’s his notes, and then the subway gets delayed, and then she spills her coffee all over her coat, and then some creep actually wolf whistles at her on her walk home, and Esther puts up with all of it. Rage, sorrow, whatever. She can handle it. Until she’s almost done dinner and picks it up to carry it to the table. Her grandma’s big bowl slides out of her hands and hits the floor with a loud crash. It shatters, red sauce splattering across the clean floor. Esther stares in disbelief. It looks like a fucking massacre, spaghetti noodles and Bolognese clumped together like brains. It’s disgusting.

As she opens her mouth to apologize to Ricky for ruining dinner, what comes out instead is a sound that she’s not sure she’s ever made before. The scream is half-rage, half-exhaustion, with a heady dose of repressed sadness. It sounds hollow and full at the same time, like she’s losing a part of herself in it.

Like a rocket, Ricky’s there, and he’s smoothing back her hair and checking her for cuts and bruises. Anything he can see. Anything he can fix.

“Are you okay? Hey, Esther, you okay?”

She opens and closes her mouth a couple times, unsure of how to even answer that.

“Fuck my life!”

She sinks to the ground. Doesn’t matter if she gets the sauce on her jeans. This has been the worst day ever and now, she might as well sink into the floorboards and rot, because she’s having a full-on emotional meltdown in front of her maybe-boyfriend.

“That was dinner! What are we supposed to do?”

“It’s just pasta. It’ll be okay.” Ricky pats her on the knee once, and then twice, and Esther realizes he’s crouching on the ground with her. Which just makes her angrier, weirdly enough.

“We don’t have any food! And that was my grandma’s bowl, and she’s gonna kill me!”

“I’m sure she’ll understand. Maybe we can, like, glue it back together? Or you could do a spell?”

He’s right, and that just makes Esther want to sink through the floorboards.

“I ruined date night. I just wanted it to be normal – for me to be normal, for once.”

When she finally takes her eyes off their ruined dinner, Ricky’s got a fist full of spaghetti and he’s smiling at her. Which is so infuriating, because their date is completely wrecked, and he should be just as upset as she is.

“Dude, dropping food as normal as it gets.” He raises his hand and catches a piece of spaghetti in between his teeth. As Esther watches, he sucks it into his mouth. “And it’s not even ruined. See?”

“Don’t eat my floor pasta,” she groans, but that does nothing to stop him. He takes a big slurp out of his handful.

“It’s so good,” he says around a mouth full of pasta. “Even better than out of the pot.”

As much as she wants to curl up and die, Ricky’s working his magic on her (again).

“That’s so gross.”

“Come on.” He extends a red-stained hand towards her. “Try some.”

“No freaking way.”

“Come on.” He bounces his hand up and down. One wet piece of spaghetti falls from between his fingers and hits the ground. “You put in all that work.”

Esther tilts her head, trying to figure out what’s behind that smile. If there’s anything at all.

“Why aren’t you freaked out?”

“Am I supposed to be?”

“I just screamed at a bowl of pasta. Not exactly rational behaviour.”

Ricky shrugs.

“Seems rational to me. Losing food sucks.”

“I think I’m going to start seeing a therapist.” Esther says like she’s ripping off a band-aid, eyes trained to his face. She wants to see the exact moment that he qualifies her as too much. Too weird, too angry, too sad.

Nothing in Ricky’s face changes. He nods at her.

“Cool.”

“Cool?”

“Yeah, taking care of your mental health’s cool. Down at the station, the Johns and I had a counselor.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. How are you supposed to care for others when you’re not caring for yourself, you know?”

Without a second thought, Esther pushes herself forward on her heels to knock Ricky back into a hug. Which is probably a bad idea, with the sauce and buttered noodles, because all she does is knock them forward into the puddle of red.

“You’re so fucking great.”

Ricky’s smile is answer enough in all of its toothy white brilliance.

“Thanks —”

Esther interrupts him with a kiss. He tastes like the sauce she spent an hour working on. She lingers for a few extra seconds, bumping her nose against his as they separate.

“Seriously. You don’t care at all that I cry all the time? Or that I’m one fumble away from a temper tantrum?”

“Honestly, no. I’d be a lot more worried if you were just walking around, totally numb.” Ricky thumbs at her cheek and Esther can feel the tomato sauce he’s spreading there. “Everybody needs an outlet.”

“I’m still mad at Kugrash, too,” she blurts out again, and then follows, “By the way. I just thought you should know.”

“Okay.” Ricky nods again, in that sage, understanding way that makes her crazy – good crazy. Ricky crazy. “I get that.”

“Okay,” she repeats and believes it.

He swipes another sauce-cover finger across her face. This time, he brushes her lips, and Esther can taste the tomato.

“I’m still not eating floor pasta.”

“Well then.” In one fluid motion, Ricky somehow gets them both off the ground, and has her dangling off of his neck. “We should probably get cleaned up and figure out something else. New date night activity!”

Esther snorts.

“Dork,” she mutters, and kisses his cheek.

“Nerd,” he answers, and returns the kiss as a peck against her lips. “Let’s go. I’m freaking starving.”

Esther loops her arms around his neck. The anger’s still there, but it’s livable now. Coated in a healthy dose of Ricky and understanding and that stupid high-school-crush stomach-ache.

“Onward! To the takeout menus.”

Sofie’s pout is all doubt.

“You want me to third wheel with you and Ricky?”

“Not third wheel. There’s something I want to show you guys – and Kingston’s going to grab Pete and Rowan after they finish breakfast.”

Ricky doesn’t say anything, but Esther can read the trust in his smile.

“You sure? ‘Cause I really, really don’t want to interrupt anything.”

“Sofie, if I was trying to take Ricky out a date, I wouldn’t have invited four other people.”

“Yeah, that’d kill the mood,” Ricky adds.

“Fine.”

They’re outside of Thompson Square Park, half a block away from Kugrash’s monument, and it’s a golden sunny day. Stupidly perfect. It’s probably his doing. Looking out for them in the afterlife, giving them comfort however he can.

Ugh, Esther lets herself think for a moment, before reminding herself of the good. That’s what her therapist told her to do. Tanya, the city-air genasi, told her to look for distortions in her thoughts. To make a list of pros and cons, good and bad, and see what comes out on top.

Kugrash’s good outweighs his bad, or at least that’s what Esther’s notes say.

“Are you guys ready?”

“Yes!” Ricky answers like a kid on a school trip. God, he’s a dork. She loves it.

“Is it a car? Did you get me a matching Maserati?” Sofia asks playfully. It’s nice to hear her like this, clear-headed and silly. Esther shoots her a grin.

“Not quite.”

They round the corner and there he is. Little gold head glowing in the sun, looking every inch the rat king that he is. Gabriela even fashioned a little crown on top of his head after their visit. With his chin up and his nose pointed high, there’s no doubt that this is Kugrash.

“Oh, Esther.”

Sofie all but runs forward, throwing herself against the statue as if to hug it. Esther gets the impulse.

Ricky, on the other hand, slides his head into Esther’s and laces their fingers together. When she looks up at him, he’s got those world-weary lines down his face again. She hasn’t seen him cry since that night, but now his eyes are brimming full. Esther stands on her toes to bring a thumb to his cheek and wipe away a stray tear.

“Is this okay? I don’t know if you guys were planning something, if he has a grave or whatever, but I just thought – I wanted him to be here. Where he saved my mom.”

Ricky nods, his face still in her hand, his gaze finally moving from the statue back to Esther. His face softens.

“This is perfect.”

Before she can answer, he leans down to press a kiss against her forehead. She closes her eyes, leaning into it until he moves back.

“You did this all by yourself?”

“Yeah. I needed to do something.” Then, lamely, she adds, “My mom did the crown.”

One of the billion cute things about Ricky Matsui is that he isn’t good with words. She’s seen him stumble and stutter dozens of time, trying (and sometimes failing) to get it right. But Esther’s come to understand that she doesn’t need his words. All that she needs is for Ricky to keep looking at her like this.

“You’re amazing.”

“I know.” Her lips quirk into a grin. “So was he.”

“Esther! Ricky!” Sofie’s voice rings out. “Get your cute butts over here!”

For the second time in a week, Esther finds herself wrapped in a group hug with the golden Kugrash. This time, Sofia’s the one clinging onto her, and Ricky’s hand is on her head, and she swears she can feel Kugrash breathing.

“I can’t believe you did this,” Sofia says eventually, once the wracking sobs stop and she can speak again. “You – I can’t believe you!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Esther pauses for a second. “He’s been up here for a few weeks, but I needed some time. To process, you know?” She exhales a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“What? I don’t care about that.” Sofia doesn’t let go for a second. “You talk to me about grief, and the right way to do it, and you don’t even listen to your own advice.” She mutters something in Italian that sounds like a curse word. Ricky laughs against them.

“This is sick, Esther.” He doesn’t need to say anything else for her to know what he means. That he means it. That he’s grateful to her and that he understands.Somewhere over the years, she’s learned to read Ricky Matsui and it’s become second nature.

“You guys,” she replies, a little overwhelmed. “You guys mean a lot to me. You’re my best friends.”

“Ditto,” Ricky echoes, and she can read that too.

“Uh, ditto. That means same, right?” Sofie sounds confused and suddenly, Esther’s laughing.

“Yeah, totally,” Ricky explains earnestly. “It’s like, same, dude.”

Sofie’s cackle is surprisingly loud and, within a couple seconds, all three of them are in hysterics still wrapped around Kugrash.

This time, when the tears come, Esther doesn’t try to stop them or explain them away. Instead, she lets two of the people she loves most in the world hold her, and it feels good. The sorrow feels sweet.

What they don’t say in the expression is that the dam never really runs dry. Esther keeps crying. Pete starts a running tally, after awhile. How many times does Esther cry while watching the Discovery Channel? How many books can Ana and Amelia misfile before she blows up on them? Her therapist says joking about it is good. That she needs to keep track of her thoughts, and that’ll help her find light wherever she can.

It’s pretty good advice, actually; turns out she’s got a lot of light in her life.