Chapter Text
It’s been a week since Legacy Day. A week. Seven days. Seven days since Raven ripped her page out of the book, seven days since everything went to hell. Or, well, that’s how Apple sees it. Raven sees it more like the beginning of a revolution. But that’s the thing, right? Raven and Apple have never seen eye to eye.
Things are… weird. That’s an understatement: things are absolutely fucking Wonderland’s Mad Hatter levels of insane, and Raven is at the center of it. And, okay, Raven is used to attention — she’s used to lingering stares, whispers in the hallway, loud silence echoing when she walks into a room — but this… this is different. She still gets her fair share of stares and whispers, sure, but there’s something in the air, something that wasn’t there before, something that makes Ashlynn Ella squeeze her hand when she passes her in the hallway, something that makes Hunter Huntsman smile at her from across the classroom.
Change. Change is in the air, and Raven Queen is the one who put it there.
“Raaaaaven!” A blurry polka-dotted glove sticks itself an inch away from Raven’s face, startling her out of her thoughts. “Raven!”
Raven laughs, gently pulling Maddie’s arm back a comfortable distance. “I can hear you, Maddie. And see you. Your gloves are not very hard to miss, especially when you’re about to break my nose.”
“Oh, good.” Maddie sighs deeply and flops back into her chair, an action that would’ve come across dramatic on anyone else, but on her was just average, quintessential Maddie. “I thought you might’ve floated into the air with all the dust bunnies.”
“You can see me, though,” Raven says, playfully raising an eyebrow. “I’m right here.”
“Well, I can see your body,” Maddie says, dragging out the word like the insinuation Raven’s making is just ridiculous, “but how was I supposed to know you hadn’t floated out of it?”
“Touché, Madeline,” Raven assents, quirking her head. Maddie giggles.
“Raven Queen, please report to the headmaster’s office,” the irritated drone of the fairy who works the intercom spouts out of the speaker above Raven’s head.
Raven sighs. She hasn’t gone more than three days without a little chat with Headmaster Grimm since she started her Legacy year. “Duty calls,” she says wearily, giving Maddie a mock salute before getting up out of her chair.
Maddie returns the gesture, smirking slightly. “I’ll keep hoping he turns into a frog for you,” she says, which from Maddie means “good luck.”
Raven snorts. “Thanks, Mads. I’ll see you later.”
The walk to Headmaster Grimm’s office is a slow one, mostly because Raven spends the majority of it dragging her feet across linoleum to delay the inevitable. Raven does a lot of that: delaying the inevitable. She spends a lot of time pushing her hand between closing elevator doors and going “Wait, wait!” so the occupants don’t leave without her; she spends a lot of time ripping pages out of books so she doesn’t have to see the end.
She gets to the door anyway, pushing the thought aside as she walks into the dragon’s lair.
“When you’re summoned to my office, Miss Queen, the expectation is that you arrive within five minutes from the end of the announcement.” The dragon, dressed in a smart navy suit and baring unpleasantly white dentures, scowls at Raven from behind folded hands.
“I had to use the bathroom,” Raven says.
“Hm.” Headmaster Grimm doesn’t blink. “Please take a seat.”
Raven walks across the room and slouches into the large plush chair placed in front of Grimm’s desk. He doesn’t say anything yet, staring her down with that unblinking scowl, and Raven resists the urge to roll her eyes, glaring up and refusing to break eye contact. He does this as a fear tactic, the “I’m so disappointed in you I’m not even going to blink or say anything” move, and it probably works on most students, but Raven’s sat through it enough times to know it doesn’t actually fucking mean anything. She can be silent and unwavering too. Just watch her.
Eventually Grimm breaks, clearing his throat and unclasping his hands to straighten the numerous papers assorted on his desk. “As you know, the Storybook of Legends is brought out of its protective case not once, but two times over the course of a school year. One of those times is, of course, Legacy Day. The other” — he pauses, looking up from his desk to remake eye contact — “is Thronecoming.”
Raven knows where this is going. It’s where all of the conversations she sits through in his office go: it’s not too late to make the “right” decision. It’s not too late to sign your life over to me. She stays silent.
“Now, Thronecoming happens in just two weeks’ time,” Grimm continues. “That gives you fourteen days to mull this over. Fourteen days to come to a decision. I know you are… young. Spirited. I understand how easy it is to become misguided at your age. However, you must let it sink in how crucial it is we follow the roles the stories have given us — ”
“Don’t say ‘we,’” Raven says, finally cutting in. “You mean ‘you.’ Just say it.”
Headmaster Grimm’s unblinking scowl returns. “Fine. You must let it sink in how crucial it is you follow the role the stories have given you. Miss Queen, I know this is beyond your realm of understanding, but you are playing a dangerous game. Your very existence is at stake here. Not just yours, but all of — ”
“How many times are we going to have the same conversation before you finally leave me alone?”
Grimm stops. Stares. Doesn’t blink. Raven stares back, eyes steel and shoulders straight. The room is ice, hard and cold and deafeningly silent for a long, heavy moment, and then the headmaster takes a deep breath.
“I hope you can find it within yourself to consider the gravity of what I am saying to you,” he says, voice clipped. “You are dismissed.”
Raven pushes herself out of the chair and lets the door slam loudly when she shuts it.
Briar Beauty is fucking bored. She’s frequently fucking bored, actually, which is really inconvenient, because she’d rather not spend the year or so she has left of this portion of her life being bored, but here she is, sitting on Apple’s bed, scrolling on her phone, mind-numbingly, agonizingly, maddeningly fucking bored.
It’s all Apple’s fault, really. Most things are, as far as Briar is concerned: she’d spend a lot more time doing things she actually wanted to do if Apple didn’t frequently insist on dominating her schedule, for one, and that’s the current problem at hand. Apple can’t stop talking. It wouldn’t be so bad if Apple ever had anything actually interesting to say, but she’s Apple, so her conversation topics are limited to fantasies about her upcoming happy ending, recounts of a day’s worth of what she considers to be “good deeds,” and her relationship with Daring, which is the product of a heterosexuality so compulsory Briar sometimes gets scared it’ll rub off on her and she’ll have to stop fucking Faybelle.
Grimm. Briar seriously needs to stop being such a bitch.
Anyway, Briar’s main problem with Apple isn’t really that she won’t stop talking. It’s that if Briar is honest — which she rarely is, so don’t go around quoting her on this — she doesn’t really want Apple to stop talking. That’s right, point and laugh: Briar is one of those hopeless pathetic dykes who are stomach-churningly obsessed with their straight best friend. It’s fucking humiliating, honestly, and it’s made even more so by the fact that Apple isn’t even straight, she’s just too horny for the white picket fence of her dreams to realize it. Not that she’d go for Briar anyway, in the impossible case she became any less delusional.
Forget being a bitch. Briar needs to stop thinking. She tunes Apple back in — surely whatever inanity she’s spewing isn’t worse than what Briar’s mind is subjecting her to — and shuts off her phone.
“ — you know? Oh, that reminds me.” Apple sets her hands primly on her lap, turning to Briar with wide, expectant eyes. “I’ve been thinking about this lately — just wondering — what do you think life is going to be like after you wake up?”
Oh, shit. Leave it to Briar to be dead fucking wrong. “I… um…”
Apparently she takes too long to respond for Apple’s liking, because before Briar can answer she’s prattling on. “After you wake up from your hundred-year sleep, I mean,” she says, like that wasn’t obvious, just to hammer the nail more solidly into Briar’s coffin. “Do you ever think about it? A hundred years… that’s a whole century. Everything’s going to be different — technology, pop culture, which celebrities people are obsessing over… surely that has to pique your curiosity from time to time. Honestly, I’m almost jealous. It would make such a fascinating study of sociology.”
Briar can feel bile rising steadily up her throat. She swallows harshly and coughs once against the burn. Fascinating study of sociology. Like Briar’s own personal hell is just a fucking science experiment. “Um, no.” Briar looks down, because if she has to make eye contact she really will vomit. “No, I don’t ever think about it. I don’t really… like to.”
Apple makes her confused little Apple hum and Briar feels it all the way down in her cunt. “Why not? I think you should. I mean, that’s going to be most of your life, Briar.”
The bile shoots up and Briar has to keel over and swallow five times to keep it from escaping. She coughs till her eyes water, gasping for air, and when she thinks she’s finally sustained the urge, she feels Apple’s comforting hand grip her shoulder. “Fuck,” she wheezes, squeezing her eyelids tightly shut.
“Briar, are you — ”
“I’ve gotta go,” Briar cuts her off, stumbling out of Apple’s grasp and over to the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“But, Briar — ”
The door slams behind Briar’s back before she can hear the rest of Apple’s plea. She dry heaves, speed-walking as best she can with a spinning head, and manages — barely — to get to a trash can before spewing her guts. She grips the sides of the can and exhales shallowly, closing her eyes. Spit clings to her bottom lip and she wipes it away harshly, shoving herself away from the soiled garbage. She slides down the wall shakily, fingers unsteady as she unlocks her phone and opens Faybelle’s contact.
make sure bunnys out of ur dorm tonite. im coming over
She puts her phone facedown on the floor beside her and fishes her vape out of her purse, taking a long hit and breathing out a slow, bubblegum-flavored line of smoke through barely parted lips. She’s okay. Everything is okay. She just needs a couple more hits of her vape, some water chased by a shot of vodka, and to hear Faybelle moaning her name in a pitch-black room till she forgets about all of this.
Briar is fine. She’s fine. All she needs is a little more time.
Apple knows Briar thinks she’s good at keeping secrets, but she’s held her hair back over porcelain toilets enough times to recognize the sound of her best friend retching. It’s fine. Apple doesn’t understand why Briar couldn’t have just told her she was feeling sick, why she couldn’t have just let Apple hold her hair back over Apple’s bathroom toilet like she always does, why she has to insist on keeping so many secrets, but it’s fine. Apple will let Briar keep her secrets. Briar can run out of Apple’s dorm and pretend everything’s okay and lie to Apple’s face if she wants to. Apple has bigger things than petty high school drama to worry about. She has a reputation to uphold, she has a destiny to prepare for, she has a roommate to keep an eye on — three previously simple tasks that have become herculean over the past week.
Raven has been avoiding her. Apple has been trying so hard to just — talk to her. That’s all she wants to do: talk. Not corner her, not pressure her, not try to convince her of anything beyond gentle, helpful little nudges, just talk. Raven won’t have any of it. She wakes up early, stays out late, pretends to be asleep when Apple tries to outsmart this terribly inconvenient schedule. It would be driving Apple mad if she didn’t have so much faith. She just has to remember: the stories are inevitable. No matter how strongly Raven resists, how far from Apple she tries to run, destiny will curl itself under her arms and fly her safely back home. Everything will turn out all right. Apple just has to remember that.
Her phone buzzes and she taps the screen to reveal a text from Headmaster Grimm. She sits up straight, opening it quickly. As far as she knows, she’s the only student at Ever After High he contacts this directly, a spot of pride she keeps secret so as not to make anyone envy her. It’s not her fault she takes things more seriously than any of her classmates — she has a very important role in the preservation of their stories, and the Headmaster sees that. He gives her a lot of responsibility, and she wields it as she will the power she’ll receive when she’s made queen: seriously, justly, perfectly.
Miss White — I hope this message finds you well. If it should not trouble you greatly, I ask you meet me in my office in ten minutes’ time. I have something I’d like to discuss with you.
Apple writes back quickly — a succinct “I shall be there momentarily, Headmaster!” — and times herself to work on her thronework for four minutes before walking out the door, so as to be perfectly punctual. She knocks on the door — three quick raps, as she always does — and greets Headmaster Grimm with her best winning smile when he beckons her entrance.
“I hope you’re well, Headmaster Grimm,” she says, curtseying politely before taking the seat in front of him. “What is it you wished to discuss with me?”
“Apple!” he greets her warmly. “You are as charming as always.” Apple blushes at the praise, but is unable to thank him before he continues. “As I am sure you — of all students at this school — are aware, Legacy Day is not the only time the Storybook of Legends is brought out of its protective case and presented to the student body.”
Apple nods eagerly. “Yes! It’s brought out again for the Thronecoming festivities, to celebrate our upcoming fulfillment of the roles the stories have given us.”
“Very good.” Headmaster Grimm smiles pleasantly. “Now, it is not… traditional for the book to be signed at Thronecoming, but unfortunately, certain choices that were made by a few troublesome students have left us with no option other than to deviate from the way we typically do things. I believe Thronecoming is a chance for… a fresh start, one might say, for the students who have behaved poorly. Specifically speaking, your roommate, Miss Raven Queen.” The Headmaster sighs. “I attempted to have a conversation with Miss Queen earlier today, to try and gently nudge her in the right direction. She took things poorly. I believe we will have better luck” — he looks up, making eye contact with Apple, who tries her best not to blink — “if she is spoken to by a peer.”
“You mean me,” Apple says.
“Yes,” the Headmaster confirms. “I mean you.”
Apple chews on the inside of her cheek — a nasty habit her mother has tried for years in vain to get her to quit — and is silent for a moment. A week ago, this would have been easy. A week ago, she would’ve already agreed, and been merrily on her way to find and talk to Raven. But now… now, Apple isn’t so sure. She’s scared she won’t be able to get Raven to see her. She’s scared she’s going to let Headmaster Grimm — and her mother, and herself, and Raven — down. Perfect, always-able-to-get-the-job-done Apple White isn’t so perfectly sure she’s going to be able to get the job done anymore.
“Miss White?” Headmaster Grimm prompts. “Is there a problem?”
Apple swallows, plasters a smile on her face. “Of course not, Headmaster.” She steels herself, taking a deep breath. “I won’t let you down.”
She walks out the door and wills herself to be telling the truth.
Raven doesn’t usually go back to her dorm after classes end. Since Legacy Day, being around Apple has become pretty much unbearable, with her nagging and loitering and “come on, Raven, just think about it”s plaguing most of Raven’s waking moments. It’s an unspoken rule: Raven goes back to the dorm after she’s sure Apple’s asleep, and she wakes up an hour before Apple’s alarm goes off. It’s left her tired — well, borderline sleep-deprived, more accurately — but it’s also kept her sane. Less sleep means less Apple, which is a win in Raven’s book.
Today, though, she breaks the rule. It’s stupid — she knows today’s the worst day she could possibly risk a conversation with Apple, because anytime Raven is cornered by Grimm, he corners Apple immediately afterward. Honestly, Raven thinks it’s fucking creepy, the hold the Headmaster has on her roommate. Apple talks about him like he genuinely created the patterns the stars make in the sky, and he acts like she’s his own personal henchman, there to carry out his evil bidding. Raven shudders thinking about it. All the effort Apple puts into trying to convince Raven she’s making the wrong choice, and really, Raven should be trying to get her to see the light.
Anyway, Raven is just tired today. It’s 4:00 PM and she’s tired and she just wants to put on a big shirt and listen to Tailor Quick while doing her thronework before bed. All she wants tonight is a fucking break. Maybe — maybe — just this once, Apple will give it to her.
Like Raven said, it was stupid.
Apple’s sitting on her bed when Raven enters the room, hands folded and eyes wide in a way that implies she’s been waiting for Raven to get home. Grimm. She blinks when Raven walks in — was she really planning to wait all night? — and sits up straighter. Raven racks her brain for something to say before Apple can start drilling her and lands on “Hey.” Fuck. Why is Raven’s brain so insistent on stupidity today?
“Hi,” Apple says, too quickly for Raven’s liking. “We need to talk.”
Raven lets out a ragged sigh, turning to face her closet and peeling herself out of her jeans. “I can’t imagine you have anything to say to me I haven’t already heard.”
Apple ignores her, rambling on. “So, the book’s going to be brought out again for Thronecoming.”
“Like I said,” Raven says, “nothing I haven’t already heard.”
“Come on, Raven,” Apple pleads, “this is a chance for you to correct your mistake!”
Raven whirls around with her T-shirt still in hand, not really in the mood to care what Apple can see of her. She wants to take everything else from her — she might as well have her body, too. “When are you going to understand that I didn’t make a mistake? Not everything is about you, Apple. You have to stop — pushing me!” Her hand alights, setting the shirt on fire, which — fuck, that was one of her favorites. Apple’s eyes follow her across the room as she snuffs it out, pupils dilated under rapidly blinking lids, and — well, Raven just doesn’t have the energy to unpack that. She keeps her eyes on her shirt as she tosses it in the nearly overflowing trash bin under her desk, muttering curses.
Apple’s silent, which is just… weird. Raven huffs irritatedly, then mutters, “Are you going to say anything?”
Apple says, “Will you please put on a shirt?” in a low, uncomfortable tone, and Raven looks at her in disbelief. “Please,” Apple snaps, and Raven rolls her eyes, but obliges, making a show of yanking a shirt out of her closet and pulling it over her head. “Thank you,” Apple says, eyes darting to the floor.
A heavy moment of silence follows, sitting between them like a thick, invisible wall, and if Raven didn’t know Apple as well as she does, she might’ve thought the conversation was over. Finally, Apple says, “Because you’ve made this choice, we might all disappear. Don’t you understand that? We could — we could die, Raven. You could die.”
Raven squeezes her eyes shut and counts to ten. “Apple, if we were going to disappear, we would have already. You have to know that’s just a lie Grimm is telling us to scare us into doing what he wants. You have to.”
“No, I don’t know that, Raven!” Apple says, hysteria creeping back into her tone. “What reason do I have to believe that? You want me to forget centuries of history because — because you don’t want to follow the role you’ve been given! You are choosing to believe the Headmaster is lying, Raven, because it’s what you want to believe. You keep saying I’m selfish for wanting my destiny, for wanting to preserve the stories, but — but the truth is, you’re the selfish one, because you’re willing to risk everything and everyone to get what you want.” She stops, panting, chest heaving and eyes wild, and Raven’s thrust back into Legacy Day, staring at her terrified, tear-streaked face. I don’t want to choose a new destiny. I liked the one I had. And because of you, it might not happen. Raven’s stuck in place, jaw wired shut.
Apple stands up, turning away from Raven and walking toward the door. She stops, hand on the doorknob, and says, “I’m going for a walk. Let me know if you ever change your mind.” She turns the knob, and with the slam of the door, Apple is gone.
Raven staggers, collapsing onto the edge of her bed and gripping the sheets in her right fist. For the first time since Legacy Day, she has the thought: What if Apple’s right?
Briar can smell the stench of sex and vodka wafting off of herself when she crawls back to her dorm just barely before curfew. Grimm, her head is pounding. She hopes she can find some spare ibuprofen in the drawer of her nightstand. Still, the headache beats having to think, especially when Faybelle’s moans are still fresh in her memory. She just needs some water, a shower, and a quick orgasm to soothe the throbbing in her cunt.
“You’re home late,” Ashlynn says when Briar opens the door, not looking up from her book. She wrinkles her nose. “And you reek.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Briar says, peeling off her Faybelle-scented dress and splashing her face a couple times in the sink.
“Sex with Faybelle isn’t going to fix all your problems, you know.”
Briar sighs. “I don’t actually remember asking, Ash.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t need to hear it.”
Briar gulps down some water, hoping she can prevent the morning’s hangover being quite as excruciating as she expects it to be. She leans against the sink, closing her eyes. “I’m gonna take a shower,” she calls to Ashlynn, already moving to turn on the water.
“Please do,” Ashlynn calls back. “Just don’t use all the hot water.” Briar sticks her middle finger out the door and Ashlynn cackles.
After locking herself in the bathroom, Briar takes a much needed breath. Fuck. As loath as she is to admit it, Ashlynn’s right. She’s rarely wrong, actually, which, for Briar, a person who is constantly making terrible decisions, is a huge fucking nuisance. She wishes she could just spit all her problems into Faybelle’s cunt and call it a day. She wishes a shot of vodka really took the edge off. She wishes, she wishes, she wishes.
She steps into the shower once the steam clouds up the mirror, gasping breathily when the water scalds her back. She tilts her head back and lets the stream run into her eyes unpleasantly, shocking her brain into a blissfully empty state of ouch, ouch, ouch. She scrubs her skin till it feels fresh and raw, tangles her hands in her hair till she feels as close to clean as her brain will let her believe she is, and then she fucks herself with the adjustable shower head.
She tries her best to picture Faybelle as she does it — ghostly skin, near luminescent blonde hair — but, like always, she fades into something softer, golder, pretty pink and unattainable. She imagines the water is Apple’s tongue, hitting her in all the right places, bringing her closer and closer to ecstasy. She pictures Apple’s eager little face, her chipper, bubbly voice asking, “Did I do a good job?” like she does when Briar checks her fucking thronework assignments. She thinks Apple, perfect and talented and desperate as she is, would be able to make her come better than any stupid shower head, any other girl’s C-grade mouth. She pictures herself saying, “Yeah, Apple, you did a good job. You’re fucking perfect, you know that?” and spills over with a cry she quickly swallows back into her throat.
Briar steps out of the shower and dries herself off. Ashlynn’s still reading her book when she comes out of the bathroom, and she doesn’t say a word as Briar pulls a two-piece pajama set out of her closet. The silence is excruciating to Briar, thoughts returning in her increasing sobriety. She watches Ashlynn, gnawing on her bottom lip as she debates whether she wants to talk about it.
Ashlynn, perceptive as always, looks up and raises an eyebrow. “What?”
The sentence spills out of Briar’s mouth: “What do you think is going to happen after we graduate?”
Ashlynn startles, slipping her bookmark between her pages and setting the novel on her nightstand. “Whoa, okay.”
“Sorry,” Briar says quickly, glancing at the floor. “Not really a fun pre-bedtime conversation.”
“No, it’s — it’s fine,” Ashlynn says, shaking her head. She’s silent for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t… I don’t really know. I want to believe Raven’s right. I mean, I kind of have to, for the sake of Hunter and me. But…” Her eyes take on a distant, faraway look. “Well, I already signed. I don’t really know what that means for me. For us.”
Briar sits with the answer, rolling it around in her brain. If Raven’s right, and the stories are bullshit, that means Briar could live. Really live, not the post-century walking dead girl life she’d play out if she signed the book, kissed awake by a man a hundred years younger than her and completely the wrong sex. She’d get to grow old alongside Apple, alongside her brothers, awake and living with the people she cares about. If Raven is right, it would change everything.
“Ashlynn?” she says, voice quiet. Ashlynn looks up. “I don’t…” She swallows. “I don’t think I want to sign the book.”
Ashlynn blinks a few times, the space between her eyebrows creasing. “Okay.” Her mouth twists, and Briar’s breath feels tight in her chest. “Oh, Briar…” she sighs, unease flooding into her expression. “What are you going to tell Apple?”
Briar feels the familiar sensation of food fighting its way up her digestive tract. She swallows harshly. “I’ll tell her the same thing I always do. Nothing.”
This doesn’t seem to settle Ashlynn’s anxiety. “Briar, Apple isn’t a person it’s easy to keep secrets from. Especially something like… like this. It’s — it’s going to come out. Trust me, I know.”
Briar laughs humorlessly through her nose. “I wouldn’t worry. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s lying to Apple.”
Ashlynn doesn’t respond for a few moments, staring at Briar with some imperceptible emotion on her face. Briar tries not to squirm.
“Okay,” Ashlynn says, finally. “Just… try to be careful.”
Briar laughs, this time genuinely. “Oh, Ashlynn, we both know I’m not going to do that.”
Apple shouldn’t be outside this late. She’s never outside this late — or, at least, she hasn’t been, not since she and Raven snuck out and found Bella Sister’s body in the cave. She doesn’t get it — how can Raven have seen that and still not think she’s making a mistake? How can Raven claim to be her friend and spend all her time hurting her?
A thought slips into her mind: maybe that’s what friendship is, a give and take of love and hate, pain and pleasure, back and forth, over and over, a tangled-up mess of “What is this? Who are we? Why are we doing these things to each other?” She thinks of Briar, of her lies and secrets and the spiteful remarks she thinks Apple can’t tell are meant to hurt her. That’s what they do, isn’t it? Laugh and cry and love and hurt each other, pretend that’s not what they’re doing, act like everything is just… okay.
Apple shakes her head, laughing to herself as she wipes at the tear making its way down her face. Maybe Raven’s literary dramatics are just rubbing off on her.
She wishes she didn’t spend so much of her time thinking about Raven. It’s a waste, because she’s almost certain Raven doesn’t spend nearly so much of hers thinking about Apple, but she can’t help it anyway. Raven’s bra is seared into the inside of Apple’s eyelids, which is just — ridiculous, because Apple has absolutely no interest in Raven’s bra, and she wishes it had never been shown to her. Sometimes Apple wishes she cared as little about her body as Briar cares about hers, because then she could just get drunk when she wanted to stop thinking. Apple sighs irritatedly. She really needs to stop wishing.
She’s not really sure where she’s walking to. The grove is dimly lit, and her mind is more focused on things she doesn’t want to think about than the direction in which she’s leading herself, so she’s surprised when she ends up stumbling upon Raven, standing in front of the Well of Wonder. Apple stifles a gasp and winces against the consequential cough that tries to escape her throat, then holds her breath, thankful for the shadows that camouflage her among the trees in the grove.
A silver coin glimmers in the moonlight as Raven tosses it up and down, staring into the well’s rainbow waters. Apple quivers, anticipating Raven’s wish — will she ask for another destiny? Apple doesn’t know if that would work, but she wouldn’t put it past Raven to try. Her hands curl into fists, perfectly manicured nails biting into the skin of her palms. Please, Raven, her mind begs. Please don’t make this even harder.
Raven stops tossing the coin. She pauses, still staring down, and Apple seems to have lost her ability to breathe. Raven does it for her, taking a shuddering breath that almost sounds like it hurts, pulling the coin close to her chest. “I wish…” she starts, and her voice is low, so quiet Apple has to really strain her ears in order to hear her. “I wish to know what happens if I don’t sign the Storybook of Legends.” She drops the coin in the well.
All the air, all the sounds, everything living and moving in the grove alongside Apple stops to hold its breath with her. I wish to know what happens if I don’t sign the Storybook of Legends. Apple could have been given all the guesses, all the chances in the world to figure out what Raven was going to wish for, and never in a million years would she have landed on that. I wish to know what happens if I don’t sign the Storybook of Legends. Apple repeats it in her mind again, savors Raven’s doubt like a hug around her skull, a lifeline of maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe everything will turn out okay. Maybe Apple will get what she’s worked toward, maybe she’ll get Raven, standing beside her like the yin to her yang, legacies coiled around each other like the stories always meant for them to. Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Raven peers over the well’s rim, hands tightly gripping the stone, and Apple waits with her. Show her, Apple thinks. Show her the truth. They sit in suspended silence for a full minute — Apple counts the time in her head, another nervous habit her mother can’t get her to break — and the well doesn’t answer. Raven sighs, a strangled, desperate sound, and Apple wants to reach out and comfort her, but she doesn’t, staying in her safe, hidden spot among the trees. Raven looks in the well again, glancing anxiously as if maybe the answer just needed her to look twice in order to reveal itself, then steps back, running a hand through her hair.
“What the fuck am I doing?” she mutters, then laughs gruffly, shaking her head. “I need some fucking sleep.” She walks back toward the castle, leaving Apple to hold her breath alone. The trees start swaying again, and Apple reluctantly lets it out.
She doesn’t follow Raven inside for another moment. She stays in the trees, staring at the well, still rolling Raven’s wish around in her mind. I wish to know what happens if I don’t sign the Storybook of Legends. If… if . Apple holds onto that maybe again, curls it tightly inside her chest, keeps it close like a promise of hope.
When she returns to her dorm, Raven is already asleep, snoring peacefully. Apple watches her, and her hand twitches. Before she realizes she’s doing it, she reaches out, putting her hand close to Raven’s cheek. A ghost of a touch: not too close, just enough to soothe Apple’s craving. Her eyes fall shut; she lets out a heavy, staggered sigh.
“Good night, Raven,” she whispers, pulling her hand back. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.” She shuts off the light and climbs into her own bed.