“What do you want to be when you grow up Responsibility?”

“Chosen by Malgenia. That was a stupid question Insight.”

“No it wasn’t. Because you’re not going to be Chosen! I am!”

“Oh, you think so do you?”

“Urk…uuuugh…{cough}…{sputter}…”

“Did you stab Insight Responsibility?”

“She was being rude Clarity. She deserved it.”

“I shall fetch one of the medical overseers.”

“You don’t have to. Insight told me just the other day how proficient she was becoming with her healing magics. This is a chance for her to show what she’s learned.”

“{hack}…{gurgle}…Aaaahhrhhgrrh.”

“See, look there. She’s casting already.”

“I think she needs to be able to form words to finish the spell.”

“Naaargh…naaa…No…”

“What’s that? I should stab you again to make it a better test of your skills?”

“Hold that thought please Responsibility. I believe Insight is working on more than a simple healing spell.”

“Are you sure? Even Insight isn’t that…{urk}…”

“Isn’t that what Responsibility? Isn’t that talented? Isn’t that clever? Isn’t that skilled? My blood daggers would argue otherwise, don’t you think?”

“You do realize, the both of you, that you’ve ruined your robes? And we have a recital tonight.”

“Sorry!”

“{Ugh}…Sa…Sorry.”

“Give them here and go bath. I can mend them while you both clean up.”

“I don’t want to bathe with her!”

“Yeah, she’s just going to try to drown me. Again.”

“She won’t. And you won’t. Malgenia wants you both to appear at your best. I’m sure you can have a peaceful, relaxing bath for our Lady’s sake.”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

“We can. No more fighting. We promise.”

“I would suggest you do each other’s hair while you’re in there. The Overseers will know you took your ablutions together and so how the other looks will reflect on each of you.”

“Ugh, that’s so unfair.”

“Yeah. I’d need magic do anything with her!”

“Think of it as doing something for Malgenia with the clay you’ve been given. Our Lady always says that it’s what we do with the materials we have that matters and to look for what we can find in them, not what we believe we need before we begin.”

– Insight and Responsibility’s first time blundering into an appreciation for the other’s inherent beauty.

I was not a god (emotional gauge: 25% joy!). I wasn’t precisely mortal either anymore though (emotional gauge: 25% confusion?). Listening to the buzz around the remains of my house as more and more uninvited and yet entirely welcome guests arrived, I found myself retreating inwards, both mentally and physically, seeking shelter in the most distant of the remaining upstairs studies (emotional gauge: 50% utter exhaustion).

“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?” Responsibility asked.

“Someone will come fetch us if we’re needed for anything,” Clarity said and stroked a bit of hair away from my face.

We were collapsed as more or less a single unit onto a couch in the farthest study inthe house with Clarity slumped against the side of the couch, me slumped against her, and Responsibility slumped against me. Being the middle layer of the sandwich was wonderfully comforting, so much so that I wanted to offer to trade with one of them, but that would have involved moving and I don’t think any of us had the strength left for that.

“That was terrible, wasn’t it?” Responsibility asked.

“Which part?” I asked, finding myself hard pressed to pick just one of our recent moments out as the leading candidate for that designation.

“All of it. Our whole lives.” Responsibility sounded sleepy and unserious, but there was a core of steely truth to her words.

“I can think of a couple of things that weren’t,” Clarity said.

“No, you two were the worst,” Responsibility said. “You made it all worth it when it would have been so much easier to just give up.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “I still need you. We still need you?”

“We definitely need her,” Clarity said. “And this? This was worth it. All of it. Even the bit at the end there. That was…”

She had to fall silent because there aren’t words for what touching the Beast was like. We all knew though. 

“It was what we had to go through to kill our old lives,” Responsibility said, and again, Clarity and I knew what she was saying.

How had I ever considered Responsibility my enemy? I mean, the stabbing hadn’t been the friendliest of possible play dates, but even then, she’d stabbed me (and I’d stabbed her) when we knew what the other was really saying, or thinking. 

Had the anger and rage we’d felt ever been anything but fear that we’d kept bottled up?

Or were we just stupid kids? 

Probably the just stupid kids.

It was tempting to blame the Overseers, or Malgenia, but the truth was we were figuring out emotions that were so much bigger than we were and the stabbing, and the drowning, and the general mayhem never really had consequences unless we got caught.

So we hid. From ourselves most of all I think. That had to be the case. I can’t imagine being unaware of how in love I was with the two women with me unless part of me was actively preventing the rest from noticing.

Of course, staying blind to those feelings had probably saved us too. Malgenia did not tolerate being second in hearts of any of her Deaths after all.

“She would have lingered over us till our dying day,” Clarity said. “I don’t know that we could have said goodbye to her in any other way.”

But we had. Searching my feelings, Malgenia felt like just a memory, no longer the dire presence she’d persisted as even after her death. I don’t think I would ever forgive her, but in offering her peace, I think I’d found it for myself too.

“So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I said, a memory of the dire answers that had been given the last time I’d asked that question bobbing to the surface of my mind. Along with the memories of violence though, others, ones I’d never really focused on, shone through.

I remembered running my soapy fingers through Responsibility’s hair, firmly enough to scrub her clean and massage her scalp, but not so rough as to cause her pain. I remember feeling her relax under my touch, accepting that while we were sworn foes and combatants, we both loved another too much to do anything but the best for making each other appear as beautiful as we could.

Had I fallen in love with her then?

No. It was well before then. Clarity’s words gave it away. She knew how we felt. She’d been maneuvering us into waking up to our feelings for years and years. I had no idea when I’d fallen for Responsibility, but I was pretty sure Clarity could name the date and time if I asked her.

“I want to be Chosen,” Responsibility said, the teasing note in her voice proving that she remembered the last time we’d had that discussion just as well as I did.

“I’m afraid you can’t grow up to be what you already are,” Clarity said.

“Sure she can,” I said. “We’re going to choose her everyday, aren’t we?”

“That implies there’s a chance we’d let her get away,” Clarity said. “I’d prefer not to give her the impression that she’s ever going to win free of us.”

“If I ever try something that stupid, you have my permission to stab me as much as it takes to cut that idea out,” Responsibility said.

“Never again,” I said. “I have much better ideas on how to be convincing.”

“If there weren’t about a hundred people outside, I’d invite you to demonstrate those ideas, but I suspect we will be called on all too soon,” Clarity said, and I could hear her pulse quicken at the idea of what I had in mind for Responsibility.

“I believe Dignity and Mercy have posted themselves outside the door to buy us some time to recover,” Responsibility said.

“It won’t be long before the others are here though,” I said.

“Little and the leaders from Mt. Gloria?” Responsibility asked.

“Oh, yeah, them too. I was thinking of the other Deaths though.” I said. “I asked Reason if she could let them know what had happened, and she, of course, had already thought of that, and said they were heading here already.”

“Why?” Responsibility asked. “I mean, why come here? We don’t have the space for the Death’s we brought back, much less all the current ones.”

“Could you imagine wanting to stay in Malgenia’s domain knowing she was gone?” Clarity asked.

“Once upon a time? Yeah, I could. I don’t think I could even have believed that it was possible for her to be ‘gone’. It still doesn’t seem real somehow, and I’d thought I’d accepted she was dead when Insight told me what had happened in the previous Assumption Ritual.”

“I bet there’s a lot who are coming here just because they don’t believe yet, or don’t want to believe. Or who may never believe. We’re sort of broken after all. Well, most of us.”

“Please don’t exclude me from that group,” Clarity said. “I assure you Malgenia left her mark on me just as deeply as she did on either of you. I…I feel distant from everything, all the time. I think it makes people believe I’m reasonable or perceptive or something, but it feels like I’m cutoff, from myself, the world, everything. I’ve always loved seeing you two together because you can be there, with each other, whatever form that took. I feel like I’m always a step apart, even when we’re together like this.”

“Good!” Responsibility said.

“Yeah, that is good,” I nodded against Clarity’s chest. “That means we can’t just take you for granted. You’re not finished yet, the same as we aren’t. So we can all work on the damage growing up a Death did to us.”

“Just, please promise to forgive us,” Responsibility said. “You know we’re clumsy, and you know we make mistakes.”

Clarity laughed, “Neither of you have ever made a mistake. You’re always yourselves, and that’s what got us here. You’re not allowed to take back anything you’ve ever said or done.”

“Can we take back what we didn’t say?” I asked. “Because there’s a lot I wish I would have said sooner.”

“Nope, she’s right,” Responsibility said. “We’ve got the rest of our lives to say the things we need to each other. And to all the rest.”

“And the world,” Clarity said. “I think people will look to us, Insight especially, for answers on where to go next.”

“That would be a horrible mistake,” I said. “They should ask people like Little, or one of the other Blessed. You know, an actual leader. I just know a bunch of things that were terrible ideas at the time and can’t be done anymore even if someone wanted to try.”

“So if you’re not going to rule the world with a Deathly fist, what is it that you want to do when you grow up?” Responsibility asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t even know what this world’s story is.”

“It’s not the one we grew up in,” Clarity said. “The structures remain, the people are still here, but everything else is different.”

“How can you tell?” I asked, keenly aware that the nigh-omniscient scale of godly awareness that we shared in the Assumption Ritual had been carried away when the godhood we were holding was consumed by the Beast.

“Just listen,” she said and closed her eyes.

And so I did.

With one ear pressed against her chest, what filled me was the sound of her heart beating strong and true. It was a sound we’d come so close to losing that I felt my eyes tearing up. She pressed another gentle kiss to the top of my head and I reached down with my hand to find Responsibility’s hand waiting for me.

They’d both made it.

I had been so much more afraid of losing them than I’d been even vaguely able to admit to myself that the reality of their presence was overwhelming. All the fears I’d stuff down inside hadn’t gone away and in that moment of safety they came sputtering out in defiance of all rationality.

But then I heard something else.

A bird singing?

In the wastelands?

Except it wasn’t one bird, it was two, and then a dozen. All calling back and forth, resuming a conversation that had been paused since the sun fell.

But how was that possible?