i can feel you in my heart

                             MEET STELLA GARCIA // A QUICK NAVIGATION.

who: open starter ( @thecatastrophicstarters​ )

where & when: mid-evening, july 26th - a bathroom somewhere inside town hall.

actinium, aluminum, americium, antimony, argon, arsenic, astatine…

she’s hunched in a corner, shaking uncontrollably, the tiles of the bathroom floor freezing against the bare skin of her legs, as her nails dig into the palms of her hands deep enough to draw blood. quiet sniffles echoing off the walls the only sounds breaking the silence of her solitude besides her gentle mutters.

barium, berkelium, beryllium, bismuth, bohrium, boron, bromine…

losing it again like she had when she’d gotten sick, destroyed like when mere had been taken from her, her world once again spinning off its axis - only this time there was no fletch or jesse in sight to help her ground herself, no one there to talk her down. she was alone because naturally she was always meant to be alone.

cadmium, calcium, californium, carbon, cerium, cesium, chlorine…

every time a door opened or a throat cleared in her direction she jumped to check, head whipping around so fast her head ached from it, any small spark of hope extinguishing when the person trying to get her attention wasn’t logan, back home and safe where he belonged.

chromium, cobalt, copernicium, copper, curium…

a month - she’s only had him back a month and already there’s a very real possibility that she’ll have to face the world without him once again, the possibility she’d never be able to tell him… for two people that could talk for hours about almost everything there was still too much left unsaid between them.

she’s not strong enough to lose him. not now, not ever.

“it’s too much…i cant breathe.”

stella had been told by several people - “she’s having a breakdown,” with worried whispers and eyes that couldn’t quite meet hers. because they wouldn’t actually step in, help her, get her to calm down. for a moment, she wondered where her sister was - merrick was always the one holly clung to, the one that seemed to bring her back to earth the best. 

but stella would step in. of course she would. holly was like the sister she never had - she’d always wanted one, begged for one for years until her father passed and her mother never found another to replace him. holly was smart, and patient, and kind - all traits that stella wished she could share as brilliantly as holly had. 

finding her there, she immediately reached for her hands, crouching down to holly’s level until she could meet blue eyes with her own. “do it with me,” she said quietly, squeezing holly’s hands in her own, “we’re going to take a deep breath - in,” she inhaled, watching as holly tried to do the same, “and out,” she let out, slowly exhaling and trying to get holly to focus on her own breathing in the same manner. 

merrick was safe, soaked from watching the storms outside but safe, which meant there was only one other person holly could be thinking about. the recruiter that stella had sent out with sloane, the one that had been attached to holly since he arrived. a churning of guilt swirled in her stomach - but how was she supposed to know? how were any of them supposed to know? they didn’t exactly have a meteorologist in their midst - though they may tell the recruiters to start looking for one - and the storm had seemingly come from nowhere. 

“talk to me,” she said quietly, brushing stray hairs from holly’s face, “tell me what’s too much. i’ll help make it more manageable.” 

Grace had been a nightmare when it came to leaving Noel ever since he’d been sick. It was a fight every time to get her to go to school or play out of his sight and she only calmed down when she was with someone like Colette or Juney, someone who had helped take care of her when he wasn’t able to. And with neither of them available, today had been particularly bad. A lot of screaming and crying and tight hugs around his legs. Eventually he’d been able to slip out of the daycare center but now he was late to his shift in the council offices.

So of fucking course it was Stella. 

“Yeah, the line at your door is about to riot,” he snapped at her, gesturing to the empty space all around them. He stalked over to his desk, putting his feet up in an attempt to block her out while he drank his coffee. He just wanted a little peace. A little quiet. If Jesse had been here this morning, they probably could have gotten to lunch without saying a word to each other.

But he knew better than to expect that from Stella. He could practically feel her staring at him. Waiting for some polite apology or an explanation and frankly, he didn’t feel like he owed her one. He said his thanks for her help with Grace already; they were even. Everything should be just business as usual.

“What do you want?” he sighed after taking a long sip from his cup.

She could have retorted back - perhaps there wasn’t a line yet, but they had been moving from catastrophe to catastrophe. They barely got themselves under control before another disaster struck - while all seemed calm at the moment, how long until something else uprooted everything? 

“Nothing you can do for me,” she retorted back quickly, ripping her gaze from his direction - she knew better than to let her thoughts wander down a lewd direction with Noel. He was arrogant, pompous, everything she hated in a man. If she was going to start considering her options, she was better off thinking about someone like Jesse - levelheaded, but compassionate. He cared about people, cared about his brother - it was something she was taking more and more notice of these days. 

Noel may have cared about his daughter, but that was about it.  

“Students?” Jesse repeated, “So you used to teach?” It was true, he was only just realizing. Even though he’d known Stella since arriving in town and becoming part of the council, he didn’t know much about her at all. Maybe because a part of him had learned the hard way that it was easier to keep people at a distance these days. Or maybe because he just hadn’t taken the time yet. 

“What’d you teach?” He asks as he takes a sip of his drink. He supposed he could see her in a teacher like position, trying to guide children on the right path. Though also knowing some of her opinions on things, it seemed like she might’ve been the sweet but also hard ass type of teacher. 

He shook his head a little, glancing back at the journal for a moment as he mulled over her words. It did seem to help, to some extent. But it certainly didn’t hold all the answers in the world - and didn’t make their job here in the town any easier. 

“Well, I certainly never envisioned trying to keep a town up and running as a future job of mine, but…It’s alright, I guess. We’re still alive, anyway.” For now.

“Close,” she nodded, “I was a guidance counselor. High school. I worked at a private school for most of the time, which was about as far off from what I’d originally set out to do, but it also let me work with the kids for most of their education. They technically saw someone else when they were in the younger grades, but a few would come see me even then, too.” 

Like Davey Echols, who’d come to her since he was 9 and had suffered such a tragic backstory, it made Stella hurt to think about. How he’d come to her once a week, telling her about his life - she had been a therapist, really, and could have gone in that direction if she hadn’t wanted to be so involved. If she hadn’t wanted to help on a larger scale than one on one. 

“I actually was on the path to becoming a headmaster, eventually. A few more years of working in the counseling office, a couple years of vice principal, moving into the head position before I was 40.” That was the plan. There had been a lot of plans, then. “I was a lot softer back then, too. The Stella of even a year ago would have gone out there herself to bring those guys home.” 

Sloane stepped aside to let the councilwoman in. “You know, you could teach a lot folks around here about taking a break, setting boundaries.” It felt complimentary, being a person someone else would come to do dodge stress. To be a safe place.

Something ordinary…gossip? Sloane moseyed toward the kitchen, trusting that Stella would follow. “Now let me see. I don’t get a lot of gossip, myself. Heard there have been a couple of fights lately, annnd,” she drawled, “a touch of love is in the air. Or,” Sloane looked back from where she’d reached to find cups in a cupboard and winked, “at least lust is.” She hoped the two weren’t connected - pairing off and squaring up.

Presenting two mismatched but clean mugs, she asked, “Food pun or best dad?”  She’d avoided the one that used heat to take the clothes off a pin up model. Didn’t seem appropriate just then.

Mugs on the counter, Sloane moved to start heating water. “Myself, I’ve never been one to jump into either fancy.” Fights - well, if it wasn’t life or death, what good could it do? And flings were never her style - she had to know someone’s heart before she could feel any kinda spark.

“Best Dad, obviously,” Stella chuckled, taking a seat and watching Sloane move with ease around the kitchen. In another life, they probably would have never met - Sloane on the west coast, Stella on the east - but while she wasn’t grateful for much in this ‘apocalypse’, she was grateful to have found people she could connect with, talk to. Feel almost like a normal human being around. 

“Intrigue,” Stella grinned, raising an eyebrow. She wasn’t surprised that Sloane wasn’t the type to hop in bed with someone before all this. Stella had been, once upon a time. Sometimes it didn’t even matter if there was another at home waiting for her - or them. She hadn’t always been known for her good decision making. 

“I never got into a lot of fights,” Stella agreed, “but I’ve definitely made my fair share of bad decisions with love. Or lust. Sometimes both.” She crinkled her nose - it wasn’t that she wanted to make bad decisions, she just simply....did. “Before Marc...and even occasionally after, but before the marriage - I wasn’t exactly shy about making my desires known when I was interested in someone. But since I’m not on this list, who is? Should I keep my eyes out for anything?” 

“Alright, alright, fair enough.” There had been movies and television and video games about the living dead, he was sure; but in the same way there were stories about vampires and werewolves and things like that, he doubted it was ever some sort of ‘prediction of the future’. But then again, here they were… 

As she gestured towards the notebook Jesse shook his head. “Nah, I just…I don’t know, guess I got in the habit of keeping track of things by writing it down. Definitely not a writer by any stretch of the imagination.” It made it easier, for whatever reason, keeping track of things. Marking the days that passed, even if there wasn’t much to write about the day.  Proof, he supposed, that they’d all survived another day. That maybe they were one day closer to reaching the other side of this whole thing. 

Assuming there was another side to get to. 

It was true that he hadn’t taken much time to get to know Stella - or really, any of the other council members. They worked well enough together for the common good of the town but beyond that…they were just faces and names. Stella, she seemed like she did want the best for the town - but he didn’t necessarily agree with many of the decisions she’d made.

“I guess not so much.”

“I’m not either,” she admitted. Writing essays, doing research - she could do that for hours at a time. Writing for fun, for herself, for others - that wasn’t exactly an accomplishment she could have associated with her name. Still, it’s an interesting side of him, one that she hasn’t seen before. 

“I used to have students who showed me their writing,” she said, deciding if they were going to sit next to one another ( she could bring her drink to a booth, but she was already lonely enough and somehow that would make her seem even worse off than she was ) then they could at least talk. Maybe form a bond that went beyond the superficial. 

She missed having a best friend, more than anything. 

“I had one girl who was destined to become a Hugo award winning novelist. Her proclamation, not mine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things had turned out differently that she could have accomplished it. Some of her stories were better than published books I’d read.” She’d loved having an insight to people, before all of this. Knowing what made them tick, knowing how to make them feel better. 

Jesse probably didn’t want to feel better. None of them did, these days. 

“I used to recommend it a lot to the kids who were going through traumas. Journaling. Chronolizing anything and everything. ‘Write down one good thing that happened to you today, even if it’s as small as ‘the cafeteria had tator tots at lunch’.” A soft smile, a shake of her head. “All I wanted to do was make the world a better place back then. Save one or two kids along the way. Now I’m helping keep a community from tearing into itself, and not even well.” She clucks her tongue, taking another sip of her drink and looking over at him. “Wasn’t exactly in the life plans, was it?” 

who: holly wood & stella garcia ( @garciastella​ )

when & where: afternoon, july 12th - hard times tavern

stella wasn’t the most popular member of council, holly was fairly sure that honor went to jesse, who was always out in the thick of things, presenting himself as a leader for the people. stella was abrasve, sometimes clinical, when they’d been friends in boston, mere had once referred to her as a ‘bitch in sheep’s clothing’ but holly had always thought there was more to it than that - more to her.

there were…similarities between them, in the way they both wore masks, both kept secrets, the way they both tried to mask their emotions around people they didn’t fully trust - a talent, admittedly, stella had mastered better than she herself ever could - holly could see behind stella’s façade, could feel the vulnerability hidden underneath it.

she’d worked with stella’s husband, volunteered at the same hospital he was employed by, had shadowed him despite how uncomfortable he’d made her and while she had her own thoughts on  the type of man he was (almost exactly like her father, too much like her father for holly to ever warm to him, to ever hold him in the same esteem she did his wife) she knows today, despite the congenial air the other woman is surrounded with, despite the brave face she’s displaying, today she’s sure that stella’s thoughts must be saturated with him.

she approaches her friend only after the crowd of thankful citizens disperses around her, the beer bottles in her hand not a first choice for either of them, but probably necessary on a day like today, hands one over with a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and slips her free hand into her the other woman’s, squeezing gently “i thought i’d advised you to take it easy every once in a while, i don’t think i’ve seen you take a break once today.”

organizing the memorial took more work than most people probably realized. finding supplies - especially lately, when they were running so limited - was just one aspect. she’d asked yale to put something about it in her paper, grateful when the other didn’t give her too hard a time about it. she may not have had to worry about permits or red tape - she was the permits and red tape, really - but there was still work with the local ‘businesses’ that ran around town, getting them to agree to work during this event, finding families who’d lost someone and letting them know what the town planned to do in the wake of their sorrow. 

it was supposed to be cathartic for everyone, really. while they’d lost more than they’d like to have during the last crisis, everyone had already lost too much. everyone had someone they wanted to light a candle for, to create a lantern for. to write a goodbye to, to try and close the chapter on books that should have been closed awhile ago.

it was no time for her own personal grief, essentially. 

“this isn’t for me,” she reminded holly - though she did take a sip of the beer, a brief moment of mourning for the days of real beer at the back of her mind. “this is for those who need to grieve.” she didn’t have anything to grieve - she’d done so for her mother already, her and al, creating a small garden in their backyard in honor of aline. and marc - 

“thank you, though,” she said with a gracious smile, waving to a seat next to her own - which she’d vacated almost two hours ago and hadn’t sat in ever since. “i guess i could use a break, if anything.” she bites down on her lip, taking another sip and glancing over at holly. she didn’t need to have a masters in psychology to know her own brain was a twist of guilt and remorse, a burden from being too smart and too empathetic for her own good. “are you holding up okay? it’s good to see you out and about, again.” 

“Well, aren’t you a mind reader?” Sloane lightly batted Stella’s arm with the back of one hand. “I was here to invite you out for a refreshment!” Of course, powdered lemonade mix wasn’t as tempting as tea, so Sloane kept her idea to herself. “Tea and a chat would be absolutely lovely, thank you.” 

She stepped clear of the doorway for Stella. “Did you have a spot in mind?” Her engagement ring still rested over her heart on a sturdy bit of cord. She had long ago grown scared of damage to that precious link to happiness, too scared to leave it on her finger, where it could catch on any number of things, or scratch or chip. Safer tucked away. That said, she didn’t question Stella leaving her wedding band where it had always been. She’d kept it safe as houses, from the looks of it, and Stella found that admirable in this new world.

“We haven’t, no, but you’re busy as bees on the council, I imagine! I met Jesse at the clinic, and I swear each of y’all work yourself to dust for this place.”

“We’re trying our best,” Stella shrugged, though she knew there was always more to do. More people to feed, more resources needed. New seeds to grow, new animals to breed, more energy to create - there was a never ending list of things that they tried to keep running as smoothly as possible so people had something akin to a normal life. It was exhausting, all the time, but someone had to do it, and Stella had never been good about sitting back when she could contribute. 

She held up the tea bags she had brought with her, stepping inside Sloane’s apartment at the invitation. “I figured we could stay here, if you’re okay with that - being out there sometimes, I feel like everyone needs something as soon as they see me.” It was like that for the others, she knew, but sometimes she just wanted to sit somewhere quietly and have a drink with a friend. “Tell me something normal - anything, really - gossip around town, a scandal or a celebration - I could use a distraction from everything, to be honest.” 

Writing what was on his mind into a notebook, it had started as a tribute to Liam. A date scribbled in the corner as he did his best to keep track, notes written down so that Liam would know what he’d been up to in the assumed short time they’d be apart. Then after a month or two, it was just a way to sooth himself, a way to talk to his brother that he had started to think maybe wasn’t still out there. A way to hold onto the hope that maybe he still was. 

Now that Liam was in Fairvale by his side once more, it was just a force of habit; another place for him to spill out the thoughts from his head so that his brain wouldn’t explode from within. Besides, it helped him to keep track of things a little easier.

Normally the bar wasn’t his choice of hang outs, but it tended to be fairly quiet during the day and the cafe too loud. So he’d ended up on a stool one way or another, some sort of drink in front of him (’surprise me’ to the bartender - and admittedly, he was surprised) as he wrote in the notebook. He’d hardly realized Stella was talking to him until she’d settled beside him and he set the pen down, flipping the notebook closed and looking over in her direction.

“Well, if you want to believe all that then you’d have thought we’d all have died in what was it, 2012 when the Mayan calendar ended? Or wasn’t there something about 2000 when technology was all supposed to fail or revolt and kill us or something? I don’t remember hearing any theories about this though. Threw us a curveball.” 

“No, just an entire genre of television and movies that said this would happen. Or something like that.” 

She had never watched any of the zombie movies, back then. Maybe she’d have been better prepared for all of this if she had. Horror had been Marc’s thing, really, and he preferred thrillers and mysteries to gore and blood and guts. Stella wasn’t about to argue it. She missed her romantic comedies more than anything else, really. 

At least half of them were based on books she could now spend her days reading. 

She noticed the notebook in front of Jesse, nodding in it’s direction as she pulled her glass closer to herself. “Did I interrupt anything important?” She didn’t know much about his life beyond the pleasantries and the base knowledge that came from working alongside one another for months at a time. “I didn’t take you for a writer. Then again, I guess I don’t know that much about you, do I? I don’t know if any of us know anything about the others in that room.” 

the calendar marked the anniversary of her first date with marc, and not a single word was spoken about it to anyone. not that anyone knew him - holly, perhaps, from back when they were in boston and stella had told her about him, but she hadn’t asked many questions about where he was now, and she certainly hadn’t been close to them as a couple - as stellaandmarc - to know when dates were significant. 

it also marked a passage of time she thought she’d never see. a year - over that, really - since she’d been intimate with anyone outside of herself. at first, it had been out of fear - who could have a sex drive when the world was ending and people were rising from the dead? and then it had been about loyalty - she hadn’t touched another since she and marc had been married, and technically, he could still be alive. and then it had been about options, and safety concerns - she couldn’t afford to get pregnant in this mess, she couldn’t form more attachments than she already had. and even if she had wanted to, who was there, really? most were paired off already, or unavailable emotionally or physically or both. 

she was sure she had options available to her. she was vain enough to know she was attractive, and while she couldn’t dye her hair platinum blonde anymore, her dark hair suited the dark atmosphere around her, and even without her normal array of beauty products, she had a classically beautiful face. one she was staring at in a mirror when he walked in - reporting for duty, but catching her off guard. 

a weekend, it was only supposed to be two of them. she hadn’t realized it was his weekend on call too. 

“i should have known it was you today,” she scoffed, her annoyance heightened with all the running thoughts in her mind. “no one else would bother showing up thirty minutes late. what if i had been run over with requests? you know people aren’t patient here.” 

it wasn’t her normal scene, at all. after a long day with the council, she preferred to go to her small home, split a quiet meal with her brother, and take in a book or spend her hours knitting. but al had called her a grandma, and she was a little offended, and the anniversary of her first date with her ( dead ) husband was coming up, so she was feeling a little more reckless than normal. 

but jesse was safe - diplomatic, he wouldn’t tell her to go away, and she couldn’t get in trouble with him. it was a nice feeling, almost something akin to ‘friendship/ but not quite. he didn’t like her much, she was sure - she had been against sending resources ( resources that they were hurting for now, mind you ) to save those who’d gotten lost. ones who’d been on their way home anyways, as stella had assumed they would be, but her cold heart had made people apprehensive about her. those who knew she’d been on the opposing side, once upon a time. 

( she hated being on that side. it was the survival of a few vs the survival of many. and if holly ever found out - well, that friendship would be destroyed in an instant. she wasn’t stupid. ) 

the bar was quiet, considering it was the middle of the week, theoretically. time didn’t really mean much when you didn’t have specific dates and events to look forward to. how could they even be sure it was really july? how could they know it was a thursday? what did that matter to anyone? 

“you know, before all of this, i thought conspiracy theories were boring,” she started, slamming a token on the counter in exchange for a tall drink. “now, i’m starting to think maybe those people were the only ones who knew anything.” she sat on the stool next to him, offering him a small smile before taking a large sip of her homebrew - disgusting, but hopefully full of enough alcohol to do the trick. “if the internet was still available, i could easily find myself getting lost in the threads about how reptilians were running the world and how it’s all going to explode in 2050, or whatever.” she let out a snort, staring at her glass as she shook her head. “does that make us the reptilians now?” 

there was something one just never grew used to, thinking your husband was ( more than likely ) dead. it made relationships difficult, having to explain why her wedding ring was on her hand when marc was nowhere to be found. there were few who understood, though they all claimed to. 

everyone had lost someone, after all. but most had closure - had seen them die, had had to do the damage of ensuring they were really truly dead. there were few others who were questioning, wondering what had happened. marc simply hadn’t come home - anything could have happened. yes, it was more than likely he was dead, but there was the chance he had managed to flee. 

without stella, but that was another fight for another day. 

sloane understood, though. she was still hoping that her own would show up from california - the country was big, but people had managed to arrive from all over. the jacobson girls - thorns in her side - had made it from nebraska. herself and the wood girls had made it from boston. not everyone was from georgia. crazier things had happened. 

and stella, well, she kept her eyes peeled, listened when the recruiters came back, hoped she could one day deliever good news to sloane. hoped that it was sloane herself who found him out there. 

“i was going to see if you wanted a coffee,” she smiled when she stumbled upon the other at the entrance to the council’s ‘office’, “but rations are running pretty low. i’m settling for tea myself - i have some extra, if you’d like. we haven’t been able to talk much lately.” 

He’d been resting when he heard Stella’s brief knock, a headache having decided to take hold again despite the fact that he was feeling better otherwise. He was sure it probably had something to do with pushing himself too hard already, for wanting to get back into work and something other than lying in a bed for all hours. But he wouldn’t complain. When the opportunity to rest was still very much in order he might as well take it.

Stella was definitely one of the council members he’d questions the choices of from time to time. She’d been one of the more vocal about leaving their people out beyond the walls rather than sending out a rescue team, which Jesse had been wholly against. But he’d stood by the agreed upon terms - that they’d wait, at least long enough to get together a proper plan and team to go out. He wasn’t afraid to bend the decisions when he had to. 

He offered a brief smile as her fingers swept across his forehead. “Yeah…scared myself a bit there, too.” Not that he’d given up, he never would’ve given up without a fight - but there had been a minute there when he thought he might be on the losing end of it. 

Reflecting on what all this had done to Liam, though - he doesn’t like it. To picture that he’d been settled on the curb, waiting, for probably days in a row…”He was just…worried.” Jesse was sure he would’ve done something similar; maybe not stationed himself on the curb, per say, but been there at the clinic trying to figure out a way to help, just as Liam had been…

It was harder, of course, when they were fighting against something so invisible. It was a wonder they had people like Fletcher who could look at the symptoms and piece together potential causes, and Liam who had managed to run with that hunch. 

Lucky, maybe; but they hadn’t saved everyone. And that would stick with him for a while, he was sure.

“We were all worried,” she said quietly, resting in the chair next to his bed. Liam had probably been there already, but was hopefully resting in a bed by now. Stella had watched over him and Grace as best she could - the council was going to have a hard enough time without the ones they cared about most also in danger. And she knew, though they’d both deny it, that if it had been Stella in the clinic, they would have kept an eye on Al, despite that he was a grown man himself. 

“Thankfully we’re on the back half of things now.” She pulled out a notebook, scribbles of her notes for the memorial on a blank page she’d been curating. “Once everyone’s out, I want to host another memorial. Like last time, after Kit.” When would they stop losing people en masse? If they were making monuments for their dead, it would almost overwhelm their living. And these days, there were so many who hadn’t even known one another.... 

were they really all just fooling themselves that they were living in a civilized society? 

“she’s taking a break - i think all this might be a bit too much for her right now.” she smiles, eyes drifting shut as stella gently brushes her hair back, with a genuine look of concern and caring on her face instead of what holly likes to quietly refer to as her politician face.

there are times when the woman reminds her painfully of her mom, stella baring some strikingly similar personality traits to that of whitney wood, although holly has never looked at her like a replacement motherly figure, only a friend, a friend who shared her disturbing addiction to coffee and was startlingly easy to talk to despite how holly felt about most people that shared the other woman’s chosen profession.

"sit with me for awhile?” for someone who enjoyed her solitude holly had been going out of her way to avoid it since she’d woken finally able to think clearly again after her fever had broke. if she wasn’t thinking about logan, about merrick or oliver or ethan, she was thinking of constance… 

about how just before she’d finally succumbed to the illness raging through her body holly had moved the young girl back up on to the bed, brushed her hair out slowly and closed her eyelids, quietly humming lullabies, like the little girl was only sleeping and not long gone from the world. about how eventually she’d been forced to face the truth as she covered the girl in a crisp white sheet and called for help.

when she was alone it was harder to pretend she wasn’t the reason a child had lost their life.

none of those thoughts were fit to share though, at least not yet anyway. “you must be beyond exhausted - there’s just you and jimmy left in the offices at the moment right?”

“it’s been rough,” stella nodded - half the council had been wiped out, and the other half had been doing their best to keep things moving. but with the positive outcome for the remainder of the patients, now was time for clean up, and more importantly - for stella, at least - a memorial to plan. “i don’t know if we’ve slept in a week, but it was really these guys that had the worst of it. seeing it first hand...” 

she trailed off, knowing how hard it had to have been for holly. a healer who couldn’t heal herself, much less the others around her like she’d spent her whole life doing. stella’s lips turned down in a frown, her fingers still absently brushing through blonde hairs. 

“we’re through the worst of it now, i think,” stella said with a soft sigh, her cuban accent rolling into her bostonian and becoming near indecipherable in her own exhaustion. “i had one of the girls, target, come to me and ask about planning a memorial. so i think that’s next on my to-do list. i’m sure the men would prefer to think about supplies and rationing and how to ensure this doesn’t happen again, but if we blow through it with no acknowledgement - “ 

she had been the one to plan the memorial after the kit stamp insurrection, too. she was wary about this becoming her full time job. 

Sleeping had never been his friend. If it came, it was almost always restless and came in short cycles, always less than six hours. Over the last few years, it had come with dreams too; nightmares, really, or memories best left forgotten. Bloody and violent, twisting narratives that tangled into monsters he couldn’t fight. The drugs Fletcher had been giving him, he seemed to be prone to the side effect of drowsiness. Constantly in and out, unsure when he was conscious or not.

So he should be forgiven for thinking, for a brief moment, that Yale had come to visit him. A pretty face, long hair that bordered on dark, slim body and nice voice. And it was surprising, really, to think that she’d come. They weren’t really like that. They understood each other, on deep and dark levels, and the sex was absolutely incredible with her. But they weren’t a visiting at the bedside kind of people.

Stella was. 

Stella made more sense.

Still, he groaned and closed his eyes against her greeting, wishing it had been Yale instead. If there was anyone in town that never let Noel fucking rest, it was Stella. The Nicest Bitch kinda girl, sweet as sugar until she didn’t get her way. He almost made it a point to never let her.

“Collette brought her the other day,” he said, his throat dry and raspy, “and Collette doesn’t need the babysitter, so why bother her? Didn’t you have more important things to do?”

“I had a lot of important things to do,” she replied dryly, refusing to fall into his bait. There was few things she knew about Noel personally - a cop from New York who only seemed to care about himself and his daughter - but getting him riled up with an argument would surely only hinder his recovery. And while she was loathe to admit it, they needed him on the council. He wasn’t afraid to be a voice of reason no one else wanted to listen to, someone the rest wanted to ignore. 

She needed him there for that. Even if she’d rather pretend to be on the other side of his arguments. 

“But Colette’s still a kid herself,” she explained further, keeping her gaze on him, taking in the pale skin and the sweat that formed on his brow. “And her sister’s been slinking around even more than normal. I don’t think she likes having children around.” A smirk, one that she couldn’t fight, appeared on her face. There certainly wouldn’t be a happily ever after for those two, as far as Stella was concerned. “I think she went to go hide at her boyfriends.” 

The words won’t sting him, though, and she leans forward a little, hesitating briefly before deciding to admit she was worried if only because he was probably too drugged to remember it when he was relieved from his bed. “I wanted to make sure she was taken care of. If you had taken a turn for the worst, do you really think Colette could handle raising a kid? She can barely take care of herself yet.” 

stella had tried to keep her visits to friendly check ins, making sure those who needed the recovery were stress free and relaxed. she wanted to be a friendly face - the council’s trusted member, even if she was one of the most viscous behind closed doors. sometimes you had to sacrifice the few for the greater good. 

but she wanted to do something for those who they had lost - it had been a member of the town who had requested it, but it was a good idea. and of all the council members, she knew jesse would be the most inclined to help her. if only to get him out of the clinic, if only to get himself back to work. they all were workaholics, unable to step back and take a look at their own lives, and she figured he’d be helpful enough, even while still in a bed. 

“glad to see you back, sergeant,” she teased gently, brushing hair off his face and smiling at him warmly. she’d always had a soft spot for him - he was tough but fair, and took the brunt of the public’s anger despite there being six others with him on the council. “you scared us a little, you know? i don’t think that brother of yours left his spot on the curb for days. i left him some food at one point when he passed out, but if i’d been strong enough, i might have carried him back to your place just so he could sleep.” 

stella found herself down at the farm more days than not - her brother relished in the georgia heat, working on the fields to provide food for the small town they’d settled in before most of the others. he said it reminded him of cuba, which sounded insane to stella - the humidity was missing, the sweat that coated her sticky and unpleasant, but he was doing his part in the community without complaint. 

they were lucky, and they knew it. there were too many who had already passed - too many they knew had passed - so stella came to visit him when she could, instead of her brother, however, she ran into michael - a single father who’d recently arrived, and she decided to see how he was settling in. 

“good afternoon,” she greeted politely, holding onto her small picnic basket with a lunch meant for her brother. “how are you settling in so far?”