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She took a rose.
She’s not sure why she did, honestly—maybe she got swept away in the mood of the Festival, or maybe her brother’s ghost was hovering over her shoulder and pushing her to be happy, like she thought he might do sometimes. Hell, maybe she just didn’t want to disappoint those two… well, not both of them at least. She could only give the rose to one of them, and once she did…
She wouldn’t. Couldn’t even. There were more pressing concerns: Later, Typhon’s crimes and justice for Gabe. For now, Duckie sitting alone in the Black Lantern; Riley waiting for her bus; talking to Mac and Eleanor and the blacksmith guy from the LARP, the one whose dog she helped find, who was now trying to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar. To be avoided: her sudden screaming anxiety about being presented with a choice she had never once in her life had to make.
She hated it, actually.
‘Why should I have to force myself for them?’ she wondered. It’s all she’d been doing since she came to this town, when it came down to it. She forced herself to step into the tiny little mining town, and it was good for a while, but then Gabe was gone and she was left alone to pick up everyone else’s pieces.
It wasn’t all bad; no, she felt like maybe it was actually pretty alright when she had those two, but…
It was never like that.
Never had been, with anyone.
Maybe she really was broken, on that front, but it was hard to feel like that when there were so many more disgusting things about herself. Of course she’d never been in love—she was traumatized, shuffled from one home to the next faster than she could even begin to get to know people. She was a freak, some sort of weirdo with empathic powers that never did more good for her than harm.
And here in Haven, she was happy. In the wake of her brother’s death, she was finally starting to feel like she could be her genuine self.
So she may have taken the rose, but she wouldn’t give it to anyone.
The irony occurred to her, suddenly: it may have just been the firelight tinting its petals, but the rose looked yellow. She was fairly certain that yellow roses symbolized friendship, or something like that… yet giving one to her friends would almost certainly ruin them, one way or another.
Somehow, she found it in herself to laugh at that thought.
She took the rose, but it sat heavy in her bag as she played her music, and was nearly forgotten while she stood with Charlotte on the dock.
Then Steph asked to meet above the Black Lantern, and its weight was back because why would Steph want to meet with her, alone, on a night like tonight, if it wasn’t about romance?
(She almost didn’t go.)
Steph was leaving town, she said. She was so excited to go… Her joy was infectious, but “Come with me” has never sounded so much like “I love you.” They hugged, and it was great, but when she checked MyBlock later, Steph had all but posted that she’d confessed to the girl of her dreams.
Then Steph left and she was alone in her apartment yet again… Then she was arrested, threatened, betrayed, shot, left to die in a ditch or relive her entire life on the way back to the surface.
Seeing it all spelled out in front of her, in those moments…
Her entire life had been a mess, hadn’t it?
Even now, it was so hard to believe anyone could love her without leaving her behind. Perhaps that was why she’d really felt so bitter, on the rooftop; maybe she just couldn’t stand another person she loved walking away from her.
Maybe she could convince Steph not to go, but maybe it would be cruel to chain the woman down and not even give her the one thing that might make it worth staying.
Maybe she’d still have Ryan, at least, but there was no good way for him to take the news that she was about to deliver.
Maybe she could just… go along with Steph, leave this whole place behind. Maybe that was a bad idea.
She stumbled into the Black Lantern, mid-council meeting, broken and bleeding and furious—angry at Jed and with herself, at her father and her brother and Typhon, all at once—and laid the truth out bare. They believed her; every one of them did, at least to some extent, and what had she ever done to earn that trust in these past few weeks? She’d never said a damn word to open up to them, had only danced in and spoken as if she knew their problems and thoughts and feelings, as if she could fix them.
But they believed her, even Ryan… and none more enthusiastically than Steph.
She hated how it all circled back to Steph, now.
Jed was arrested. Ryan was heartbroken, but he’d recover eventually. She’d be there for him, while he did, and she’d be there for him after, too. He’s been there for her this whole time, so she’s more than happy to return the favor now… no matter how much he insists that he’s the one who owes her, still, from that day on the cliff when she told him he’d be forgiven; when he showed her that her power could bring her more than just pain.
She’d never truly repay him for that.
Jed was arrested, and Diane made a statement, and news reporters harassed a majority of the town for weeks, trying to get a quote or two to plaster across their stupid ‘local gossip’ column or whatever equivalent they had.
She was sick of it.
And just as her frustration was coming to a head, Steph barged into her apartment—although, at this point, she had no clue who would be taking her rent—saying she wouldn’t be leaving after all.
Or rather, that she wouldn’t go anywhere alone, because she’d prefer to waste her life in Haven Springs with the woman she loved than to live out her dreams solo.
Steph's aura was a shade of yellow-pink-purple that she'd never seen before, and foreign butterflies invaded her stomach like an army of parasites that made her want to puke. The feeling reminded her of the sickening floaty sensation she'd suffered through after taking too many of Charlotte's edibles the other day. Something that could, just maybe, be pleasant, if one were to build up a tolerance that she simply didn't have.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” she’d responded, reeling, and more than a little bit guilty about the torn up bus ticket that had probably cost the other woman fifty bucks.
Steph promised to always be there for her, and then the apartment was empty again.
She was tired of the apartment being empty.
She picked up Shu Shu from where it laid on the floor, looked at the eternally smiling face of the mouse for a moment, sighed, and climbed the stairs to the roof.
When she sat down in her chair, anxiously fingering the ratty plush, she couldn’t help but wonder what Gabe would say, if he were there.
He’d tell her she should stay in Haven Springs… but then he’d say she should go; he was too much of a goof to give her a straight answer. He’d ask her to picture the future—three hours from then, she thinks Steph’s bus ride would’ve been. She’d be standing by the bridge, watching the bus leave, and Steph would be waving enthusiastically out the window.
She’d have told the other woman to leave without her, because she could never love Steph the way Steph loved her.
Steph would visit anyways. Almost monthly. People would tease her for always coming back instead of pushing her music; they’d say she’d never take off if she couldn’t leave the nest. Steph wouldn’t care.
Time would pass. The town would recover, and so would its people, and so would she. She’d carve out her own place in the community; hell, she already had.
Gabe would tell her that everything would turn out for the better, so long as she chose for herself.
Somehow, picturing him saying that, she found herself automatically reaching for her phone. She pulled up their text conversation without really thinking about it and shot off a single message:
[Can we talk?]
Steph replied in a heartbeat, and made her way back above the Black Lantern in barely longer.
"What's up?" she asked, once she'd arrived, and the only possible response was an apology.
"I love you," she whispered, and she was being honest but it would never be enough. "You're beautiful, and you're kind, and you're funny and perfect and I adore you," and it was all true but not quite right, "but you deserve someone who can… who actually loves you, the way you love them. And I don't think I can do that."
As much as she tried, she couldn't seem to ignore Steph's anxiety slowly creeping into them both.
"What do you mean?"
"When you were here, earlier," she started, slowly, trying to figure out how to convey thoughts she'd never needed to express before, "your aura was… Hot. Fuzzy. Anxious. There was a lump in your throat and bugs in your skin and you loved it." Here, a pause. "People say all the time how amazing romance is, how it can make you complete, like it's the ultimate goal in life, but… Even now, standing in front of you and realizing what that stange warmth I've been feeling from you for a while is, I just… don't get it."
She was still holding Shu Shu, she remembered suddenly. Looking down at the mouse, she noticed that she'd been fiddling with it hard enough that it was in danger of losing its other ear. She'd have to borrow Charlotte's sewing kit, later… She forced herself to return to the present.
"I love you, Steph," she said again, because somehow nothing about this conversation scared her more than the possibility that the other would think that wasn't true, "but I've never been in love with you. With anyone. I don't think I ever will be.
"I'm sorry."
She rubbed Shu Shu's loose ear between her fingers one last time, then looked up at Steph.
"Okay," came the response.
"…Okay?"
"Thanks for being honest with me," Steph said simply. "It sucks, I guess, but you're important too. If you say you don't wanna date, then we won't date. I'll get over it." Then she laughed. "There are way worse ways you coulda turned me down, so I'm honestly a bit relieved, if anything."
And that was that.
The two of them chatted for a while longer, and when Steph left it didn't feel quite as much as though she was never coming back. A few hours later, Steph sent her a social media post that seemed to echo her rejection speech almost perfectly, sans the empathic parts, and the next thing she knows, she's going down a rabbit hole of queer identities and terms she had no idea existed until just then.
She orders a brand new flag to replace the Colorado flag that hung over her bed. The orange and blue are vibrant, and somehow every time she sees them something warm and a little bit giddy rises up in her chest.
She learns all the jokes, researches every symbol, and she uses them at every opportunity. She finds it funny how this thing that used to be nothing more than a source of confusion and stress has so quickly become something euphoric.
Maybe it's because she's finally found something about herself that isn't normal, but isn't freakish either. There's a community of people out there who feel the same way as she does, and she finally has a foothold in normality. She doesn't have to hide this.
She can just… let herself be weird.
She can scream it to the world: she isn't normal. She's an empath who doesn't feel love, and that's okay. She isn't normal, but neither is she a freak.
Alex Chen is aromantic asexual, and anyone who has a problem with that…
Well, they can go fuck themselves.