#wr vic

Morgan set her basket down in the garden and brushed the frost from Deirdre’s pansies as she made herself comfortable in the earth for weeding. She was here to tend her own patch of witch hazel and tending to her lavender saplings, which were sectioned off only by placement, indistinguishable to everyone but her and Deirdre. She tended the yellow buds and tender stalks with swift, decisive care, until she heard her guest come through the gate.

“Over here!” She called. Strangely, she hadn’t been all that surprised when Vic wanted to do something calm, even gentle, on their friend date. She came off as brusque and dismissive online, but the times Morgan had seen her at the local art gallery, her look was so thoughtful and sad. She didn’t strike Morgan as someone with a thirst for violence so much as someone in pain. Of course, this was exactly why Morgan thought keeping sharp on her training skills with Victoria would be a good idea, but she didn’t have enough drive in the idea to push for it. She would rather heal herself than stay on her toes, expecting violence sooner than later. No, this was better.

When her friend came through the gate, Morgan waved and beckoned her over. “If it’s too cold for you, we can always duck inside. I’ll have you know I am a very good cook.”

Morgan Beck was certainly an anomaly in White Crest.  In a world full of annoying, nosy fools who always seemed to have a sinister endgame, Morgan offered a calm, gentle contrast that Vic wasn’t sure she’d ever been used to.  Though Morgan was still at arm’s length, it wasn’t often that Vic let anyone get so close, not in a genuine way, at least.  There was too much risk- of abandonment, of death, of someone lurking in the shadows, ready to whisk the happiness away in a heartbeat. And then there was the problem of Morgan’s obvious lack of a beating heart, stirring questions deep in Vic of the morality of the situation.  She refused to become friends with a vampire (ignoring the pull for friendship she often felt for Fran, what a ridiculous, weak thought).  Morgan never questioned her request for an evening gardening session, free from the threat of the sun, which was also slightly alarming.

Even as she walked up to the address Morgan provided her, she wasn’t quite sure she’d stay.  But then Morgan’s voice was beckoning her over, and Vic rolled her eyes as if closing the distance between them was an inconvenience.  “I thought you needed help gardening”, she said, glancing toward the small studio behind Morgan and trying to hide her disappointment at the thought of a change of plans.  “I mean, if you’re cold, it’s fine, but I’m okay.”  She blinked, pulling gardening gloves out of her pocket, not giving Morgan a chance to protest.  “What do you like to cook?”, she asked as she slipped them on.

Morgan grinned sheepishly. “I’m pretty sure what I actually said was, I’d really appreciate it if you would garden with me, since you seem to know so much about it.” She didn’t need help so much as she wanted to get to know Vic better. There was something familiar about the woman, a loneliness that seemed, to Morgan, to ache as much as it bristled. Morgan wanted to slip her hand past all the thorns and brambles Vic planted around her and clear just enough room for her to realize this was no way to be. Whatever she feared or grieved, it could be okay. “But you don’t need to sound so disappointed. There’s plenty of work here to keep us occupied for an hour or two.” She gestured to the weeds and the azaleas in need of watering. “But any longer and we probably will have to duck inside so you--we--don’t catch a chill or anything, huh?” As for her cooking, Morgan opted to claim the pride she held in her accomplishments. “Oh, lots of things. I bake a lot of pie and pastry, so I’m starting to get into the savory variety of those. And some traditional Irish dishes, for my girlfriend. But she says everything I make tastes good, so I’m not sure how successful they really are.”

“We don’t need to argue semantics”, Vic said, sending Morgan a stern glance.  She didn’t know how to respond to the compliments or kindness, it was too much to think about.  It was more useful to ignore them all together.  If Morgan was going to continue to be sickeningly sweet, she better get used to that reaction.  She let out a phantom breath at the sight of the weeds, happy to get started clearing them away with expert hands.  There was something peaceful about the act- some sort of silent therapy in cleaning up the weeds of the physical world when the ones that wrapped themselves up inside her heart and stomach sat there so stubbornly.  She furrowed her eyebrows at Morgan’s small slip-up, wondering what she meant.  “If you insist… but I don’t know how long I’ll stay”, she warned.  Truth be told, getting cozy inside of Morgan’s studio with a small bite sounded nice, even if she could live without the eating.  But the risk that came with it was greater than it was worth.  

She had been working rather absent mindedly, only half listening to Morgan’s rambling, when one word stuck out to her like a bell in a storm of silence.  “You have a girlfriend”, she asked, her hands pausing among the weeds.  “I didn’t realize you were… I didn’t realize you weren’t…” she swallowed, clearing her throat awkwardly.  “That’s… nice for you.  Do you...enjoy having a girlfriend?”

Morgan looked sidelong at Vic as she froze and sputtered over the mention of the word ‘girlfriend.’ “Is the phrase you’re looking for, ‘not hetero’? Not all lesbians look like Ellen, Vic. Some of us like wearing skirts sometimes. Some of us even wear lipstick.” Laughing, she smacked her pink painted lips to emphasize her point. She stopped pretending to work and shifted so she could sit and look at Vic straight on. She didn’t know what kind of uncomfortable the woman had fallen into, if it was just embarrassment or latent homophobia or something more tragic.

“I’m in love, Vic,” she said after a while. “I spent most of my adolescence convinced that the sheer magnitude of my gay was a literal curse on my family, and then the next ten or so years being closeted and awkward and afraid and pretty much all the time after that being convinced that even with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repealed, even with Obergefell v. Hodges, I was just not a person made to share a whole life with someone. And I did everything I was supposed to, I made do, I tried as much as I could be brave enough to try, but I was practically forty without a relationship lasting longer than six months. Dating for all people is hard, but for me, and probably for a lot of queer gals...it’s a different kind of hard. And then I fell in love, and in spite of our mountains of trauma, our fears, we fit in such a way that...it’s like being held. She looks at me, she smiles at me, she touches my hair or squeezes my hand or says something and it’s like being held. It’s a kind of safety I didn’t know I could have.” She shrugged and fished out her phone to show Vic the lock screen: Deirdre laying sprawled on a window seat in their home, all three cats sleeping peacefully on her, as she looked up at the camera with an adoring, sleepy look on her face, in that bright instant when she realized she was being photographed and composed her face. Morgan had been going for a candid shot, but she was still beautiful, still warm, still herself, and that alone made the image worth keeping. “If you’d told me that this would be my life even a year ago, I would’ve thought you were being cruel. But not every surprise life throws at you is a bad one.”

Morgan looked good and hard at Vic, trying to guess if anything had changed, if she suddenly had one foot out the door, if she should let her. “At the end of the day, I feel like everyone deserves to be known, and understood, and loved. Even if it’s just for a little while. Life is so fleeting, and there is so much beyond our control, but nothing else, people should be loved, by whoever they want, however they want, however the magic of attraction or understanding works out.” She held her gaze, still searching. “How do you feel about it? Have you ever been in love, Vic?”

“Ellen is insufferable”, Vic muttered. Her hands returned to busying themselves with the weeds, but Vic’s ears were focused on the rambling falling from Morgan’s heart.  Love.  She was in love, with a woman, so openly and freely without a goddamn care in the world.  Still, her naivety sparked something inside of the woman, and despite her best efforts, she let her eyes land on Morgan’s, taking in every word as if they were the sweetest sounds she’d heard in years. Maybe they were.  She let the rest of the world believe the was aloof about politics and world events, but she could admit, at least to herself, that she had much of the same reaction when the United States seemed to offer more and more rights to LGBT couples in the last 20 years than they had in her near 500 years on this Earth.  It was both exciting and frightening. She hadn’t realized it, but she was nodding at Morgan’s words with a silent expression on her face, one that told Morgan she related more than she was willing to admit. Her features softened even more at the picture she was offered, and it was all she could do not to reach out and snatch the phone from Morgan’s hands.  There was so much hope in her voice- so much warmth and love and happiness.  And then the way she spoke of her girlfriend, as if nothing more in the world mattered, as if everything made sense in her arms, it sounded so much like-

No.  No, no, no, no. She wouldn’t think of her.  She would not think of that time in her life.  It was frivolous, useless, tragic, awful, devastating, painful...

Seemingly suddenly, she stood up, looking away from Morgan with hard, angry features.  Her beat of silence lasted an uncomfortable amount of time.  “Love doesn’t exist, Morgan”, she said finally, her voice devoid of emotion.   “It’s the harsh truth.  Better you realize that now, than to have your heart broken down the road.”  She turned away from her willing the moisture in her eyes to disperse without her bringing attention to it.  “I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you, but that’s how it is.”

Morgan saw the pain and the longing in Vic’s face as she finally met her eyes. So, it wasn’t homophobia. Or if so, not the kind she wanted to send people away over. She followed Vic to her feet, waiting for the admission, as if it wasn’t already telegraphed by the tears shining in her eyes. “Vic...” Morgan whispered.

And then she spoke, stiff and hard as the shears she’d been handling a second ago.

“Of course it exists,” she replied, soft and patient. There was no arguing, just as you wouldn’t get worked up over reminding someone that the sun hung in the sky and flowers needed light and water to grow. She walked around to face Vic again. Whatever pain the woman was running from, she wanted to look at it with her, to understand where it had come from and how deeply it was buried. “Love is as real as air, or flowers fooled by a false spring…” she offered Vic a purple bloom from her hand, a gift, and a point. “I think some part of you knows that, too. Or you did once. What I don’t understand right now is who convinced you of such an awful lie, and what made you choose to say that to me just now.” She tilted her head and leaned in, anything to make the woman look at her. “Can you tell me, Vic?”

Vic scoffed out a laugh at Morgan’s insistence, looking to the side with a cynical shake of her head.  Love- long, everlasting love, was a fantasy, and Morgan was fooling herself.  In a cruel life that lasted forever, everything had an end.  And fate, with her twisted, evil intent, liked to make sure the end of happy things like love were especially tragic.  She let her eyes fall on the flower offered to her, but her hand didn’t budge to reach for it, no matter how much it ached to.  Instead, her eyes finally found Morgan’s, a mix of anger and sorrow gleaming from them.  Why was she doing this?  Morgan didn’t know anything about her, and somehow she sat here, gently demanding the truth- as if talking things out could make centuries of sorrow disappear. “I convinced myself.  Nothing happened, nothing is wrong, this is just something one knows.  You’re living in a fantasy, Morgan.  And nothing will come out of it but pain.”  She blinked, watching Morgan and waiting.  Waiting for her to demand that she leave, to tell her they’d never speak again thanks to her outburst.  When nothing seemed to happen, she let out an annoyed huff.  “I didn’t come here to discuss personal lives.  I came here to garden.  If we’re not going to do that, I suppose I’ll just leave.”

The anguish in Vic’s expression was only too recognizable to Morgan. She inched closer, as if she could read her trauma in her pores if she squinted hard enough. “People don’t convince themselves of anything that awful for no reason,” she said quietly. She flinched back as Vic flexed her cold stiffness, shutting Morgan out.

“You asked me,” she said. “I said one thing about fucking Irish stew, actually less than that! And then you asked me! Why is that? Is it because you’ve shut yourself so much that hearing about other people’s happiness is the only thing you have left? Because there’s nothing stopping you from being happy, Vic. You could have someone, you could at least have hope, if you weren’t spending all your energy into being like this. But why try to crush my happiness, why try to argue with me that everything I have isn’t real? Does it make you feel better when other people are as sad and hurt as you are, or do you actually think that you’re the only person who understands the world? Oh, stars, or better yet, are you actually so naive as to think that suffering makes you wise? Because I have some big news, teenage drama queen!”

She stared at the woman, searching and accusing. Her mouth throbbed with anger. She didn’t know this woman half as well as she thought she did. She hadn’t imagined that she could be cruel. Not to her, not with this much determination. But there was something in Vic that made them similar too, she reminded herself. She could see it in the water glazing her eyes, in the clench of her jaw. It was so much work, it must get exhausting sometimes, even if it had become muscle memory. She softened and breathed slowly. Her body didn’t need it, but it was a good distraction for her mind. She’d been caught off guard, and so she’d been hurt, but she didn’t know this woman. She didn’t have all the pieces she needed to understand any more than Vic had all the pieces to understand her. She had no idea how insulting she’d been, and so Morgan couldn’t hold that against her.

“You aren’t the only person who has suffered, Vic,” she said, her voice calm and even now. “And my decision to be happy, to love someone, doesn’t mean that I’ve been living some kind of gay Nancy Meyers fairy tale. You don’t know a thing about what I’ve lost or what pits scraped myself out of. I know what it feels like to have nothing, to have only your own suffering for company. I know. But I’m not going to play some cynicism game to prove it to you. I want to be your friend, and I don’t need you to see everything like I do…” Not yet, anyway. “But you don’t have to be so cruel. I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve that, and I don’t think that’s the person you really are anyway.”

Vic stood there, stoic and unblinking as Morgan unleashed onto her.  Her jaw was clenched and she swallowed hard, but she refused to let emotion show on her face. This was, despite the swirl of emotions dancing deep in her chest, each of Morgan’s accusations stirring a new wave of recognizable dread. Morgan was speaking as if she knew her, as if they were friends, as if they had some deep connection that Vic had just severed by saying how she felt.

She was speaking the truth, and it was all too much to handle. She scoffed out a bitter laugh, shaking her head at the name calling.  Morgan’s grandmother wasn’t even alive when Vic was a teenager.