Scenes From A Destination Wedding Weekend, Part 9: 2 AM, Served Two Ways

Harper

It’s two in the morning and Harper arises from her reverie with Skye, trussed up just so, snuggled up to her breast. The habit they have worked out all those years ago of the Mistress being satisfied with watching her wife’s climax to resolve Tie Me Up! has never gotten old. The sea elf pours all of her love and affection for the drow into a singular kiss to the forehead; Love Is A Battlefield brings Skye to instant orgasm.

“Morning, my lady love,” Skye murmurs, voice still thick with residual sleep, once she comes to. The magic rope starts to untie itself and reshape into a rope bra.

“Morning, Mrs. Copse-Wood.” Reluctantly, Harper gets out of bed and assembles an outfit that is hopefully not too much for the Garden residents. She’ll wait to get dressed, of course, not because of Embarrassed Clothed Female (for once), but simply because Skye prefers the naturalism lifestyle.

“Going to see Dinah, my lady love?”

“Yeah. I know that she’s free of me, but I still feel responsible for her. I want to make sure she’ll be alright after today.”

“It’s a big day for Emi,” Skye notes, starting to sit up.

“Big day for all of them. Help me watch the kids. Shoot, watch me in case I need a reminder about following that waiver. I presume she’ll be civil and accept whatever loophole Andy found but...”

Skye wraps Harper up into a hug, her face pressed into her left breast, right below the sea elf’s engagement scar. Skye cuts to the quick, like she often does when the kids are fighting, “...my wife wants to play the heroine so Andy doesn’t have to? This will be their Endgame, my lady love. Let them have it.”

“I know, my sweet little drow, I know. This will be good practice for Mona’s Endgame, huh?”

A knock on the door interrupts. Skye gives Harper’s butt a firm squeeze, then says, “Go. Dinah will be waiting.”

With a final kiss to a lilac forehead, Harper turns to go. Scarlet is waiting, a hand on her hip, in a soft T-shirt and lounge pants, the kind of thing you wear to a hotel’s continental breakfast before you actually want to get dressed. Harper closes the door, then pulls her outfit out of her inventory and straight onto her body: a sports bra from The Wulf Den, with a loose crop-top over it, some leggings, and, of course, her knight boots.

She formally greets her oread-wife with a kiss. “Daph sleep well?”

“We are going to have to talk about her behavior yesterday, so you know,” Scarlet declares, deadpan.

“I’ll check with Gina before we drop her off with Marcie.”

“You knew?”

“Skye told me enough for me to figure out. You know we are filming scenes for the season while we’re here, right?”

Scarlet glares, but without heat, “Could have warned me...”

An apology kiss delivered, they walk down the hallway to the main lobby. Waiting for them are two women. Katherine, looking more radiant than she has a right to be in the early morning hours, gives them a wave. Jenny, still a little nervous, whispers, “Why are we up so early?”

“This is about when I wake up, Jenny.”

“Yeah, but... aren’t you treating this like a vacation or whatever? Shouldn’t you want to sleep in?”

Scarlet steps over, resting a hand on Jenny’s shoulder, “This is just the easiest time to squeeze this into the schedule. The four of us are going to make a brief stop downstairs. There are people that could use some inspiration that only Katherine and you could provide.”

Jenny gives Scarlet a confused look. Harper beckons Katherine to get close, then casts Teleport, choosing a point near to the chuck of her soul embedded in Dinah as the destination. One moment, they are in the early morning darkness of the lobby; the next, they are in the equally inky darkness of the Garden.

Dinah’s ears snap flat before the rest of her catches up, the half-full coffee mug dropping from her hand and breaking on the ground, because she’s not in the Clinic, she’s in the Garden, off duty, and something just displaced air six inches from her face.

Then she sees who it is, and her face goes through about four different decisions in half a second.

“Sorry,” Harper begins, “I didn’t want to bother Andy to press the elevator button for me. He’s got a big day upstairs. I miss you, Dinah.”

Harper holds out her hand, still unsure just how much she should initiate with her former contestant.

She doesn’t take the hand. Not yet, she’s too surprised. She looks at it like it might still be a trick of the light, then up at Harper’s face, and her jaw works like she’s chewing on the first three things she almost says before landing on something safer than any of them.

“You couldn’t send a letter first.” It’s not really a question. Her tail, low and lynx-tufted, gives one slow, involuntary flick — the kind of tell she used to be better at hiding. “Century apart and you just — pop in. During my morning coffee.”

She still hasn’t moved. But her eyes have gone soft at the edges in a way that undercuts the dry delivery completely, and she seems to know it, because she looks away first — toward Katherine, grabbing at the excuse of a subject change like a lifeline.

“Katherine.” Real warmth this time, no hedging in it at all. “Eden didn’t say you were coming down.” She reaches out and touches Katherine's arm, light, easy, the touch of someone who has done this before and knows exactly how much contact is welcome. “You look good. As usual.”

Katherine’s free hand comes up — a small, economical gesture, fingers spread then folding halfway, a private shorthand Dinah apparently reads without effort, because she huffs something almost like a laugh.

“Yeah, well. Neither did I.” Then her gaze slides past Katherine and snags on Jenny, and the professional ease drains out of her face by degrees. She doesn’t say anything at first. She just looks — too long, too still, the look of someone doing arithmetic she doesn’t want the answer to.

“Wait.” Her voice has dropped, gone careful. Her eyes flick to Scarlet, then back to Jenny, cataloguing the wood grain of her, the impossible stillness under the confusion. “I know that face.”

“Sorry for coming unannounced,”Harper apologizes, then gestures towards the dryad, “and may I present Jenny Ackley. Ms. E found a dramatic way to help her out of her predicament.”

Jenny, still a little nervous, awkwardly waves, “Uh... hi? I think I saw you at the party, but there were so many people, I couldn’t keep it all in my head. I guess you know each other?”

While Jenny speaks, Harper is already pulling out coffee and mugs from her inventory, ready to use Prestidigitation to warm up the cold brew to piping hot, if so desired, “I got coffee for normal people and for Daphne, if you want to live on the edge.”

“I did say that Harper was planning on visiting before the wedding at the bachelorette party yesterday. Or is this one of those timey-wimey things where the party hasn’t happened for you yet?” Scarlet notes.

Dinah snorts, half a laugh she doesn't quite let all the way out. “You said ‘before the wedding.’ You did not say ‘at two in the morning, while you’re off-duty and having coffee to make up for a long night.’” She rubs at one eye with the heel of her hand, ears still flat with the residue of being startled by teleportation. “So no, Scarlet, this is not a timey-wimey thing. This is a you-and-Harper-have-no-concept-of-hours thing.”

But she's already stepped past the irritation, because her attention has snagged hard on Jenny and won’t let go.

“Jenny Ackley.” She says the name like she's testing whether it still fits the same person, and something in her face cracks open — not quite tears, but close enough that her voice roughens on the way out. “I know exactly who you are. I saw—” She stops herself, jaw tight, decides against saying it. “I saw what happened to you. A long time ago. I didn’t think—” Another stop. She shakes her head, ears twitching, and starts over, gentler. “I’m really, really glad you’re standing here talking instead of holding somebody’s coffee mug.”

She looks Jenny over properly then, top to bottom, the assessing look of a doctor cataloging a patient who shouldn’t by rights exist anymore, and something loosens in her shoulders.

“You don’t have to remember me from the party, there were tons of people and most of them had ears, tails, wings, or extra limbs. But if you want an actual introduction instead of a confused wave — I run the Clinic downstairs. Here, around us. The Hollow Garden. There’s a whole community of women down there who used to be in worse shape than you and now spend their afternoons complaining about the water pressure in the springs. There are eliminated contestants we care for, even though we can’t undo their transformation. You’d fit right in. I could use somebody who knows how it feels, from the inside, to help me convince a woman who’s a chandelier that she’s allowed to hurt.”

She says it lightly, but there’s real intent behind it — an invitation, not a joke.

Then, to Harper, without missing a beat: “Absolutely not to Daphne’s blend. I know for a fact that woman grinds her beans with salt, and I would like my tongue to keep functioning today.” She holds a hand out for a normal mug instead, and lets it linger against Harper’s fingers a half-second longer than the coffee handoff strictly requires.

Katherine taps Dinah's arm once, then lifts both hands — a little wave, fingers fluttering — before pointing off toward the far cottages, angling her whole body in that direction.

“Go,” Dinah tells her, soft. “Tell her I said hi.”

Katherine dips her head and slips off down the path, unhurried, leaving the four of them behind.

Dinah turns back, and there's something almost helpless in the way she looks between Scarlet and Harper now, all the dry armor gone loose at the seams. “It’s really good to see you both,” she says, quiet, before she can talk herself out of saying it at all.

“Correction, Daphne doesn’t believe in coffee grinders or cooking in general. But, regardless, it’s good to see you, too,” Harper replies, composure a little shot too. I really thought that the Garden time dilation difference would have worked out. Just my luck.

Scarlet flinches at the very accurate line about their mermaid-wife, then starts to rub Harper's shoulder, guessing at her wife’s thoughts. “So, this is Jenny’s first time here, obviously. We don’t want to put you out too much, and, apparently it’s 2 AM here too, so do you mind if we find a place to talk?”

“I’m curious about all the context I seem to be missing,” Jenny states, “like how someone like me could help? I’m only here for the wedding, then...”

Dinah waves off the apology before it even finishes landing. “Don’t worry about putting me out, I’ve been up worse hours for worse reasons.” Then she does the math out loud, ears tilting as she works it. “And for the record — yeah, time’s doing its thing down here same as everywhere else in the Hotel, just on its own clock. It’s two days on from your party, my side of it, even though it’s two in the morning for both of us right now. Funny how that works out. I got the extra forty-some hours and spent basically none of them sleeping, so.” She shrugs, like this is a mildly interesting fact about the weather.

She gestures toward the low bench near her cottage, an easy, worn path in the moss leading to it. “We can sit there. Nobody’ll bother us this early, everyone with sense is asleep.” Then she turns to Jenny, and her voice gentles, deliberately, the way she probably talks to new arrivals in the Clinic who don’t know yet whether they’re allowed to feel safe.

“You’re not missing context so much as—” she pauses, choosing the words with visible care, “—there’s a lot of us who came out of a season different than we went in, and didn’t always land somewhere good afterward. Some did. This is where the ones who didn’t get to land anyway. I asked if you wanted to meet people like that because you know what it is to lose everything that made you you for a while, and get it back. That’s rarer than you’d think, even here. Doesn’t mean you owe anybody your evening. You said you’re only down for the wedding — that’s plenty reason on its own. I just didn’t want you to leave without knowing the door’s open, if you ever want it to be.”

She glances at Scarlet and Harper, gauging whether she’s overstepped, then adds, softer, mostly to Jenny: “No pressure. Ask me anything else you want to ask, first.”

Jenny turns to Harper first, “I’d like to help, if I can, is there a way...”

Harper nods, already picking it up, “Let me know when and I’ll hopefully be able to make that happen. Might do Mona or Tegan some good to see what happens here, for different reasons. It will definitely do you some good, paying what Tina and the rest of us did for you forward. So many of the eliminated and the abandoned feel like you did. I know you got a big heart; watching you help Mineko and my sister from afar...”

Scarlet concurs, “It will... without leaning on my transformation. I’d...”

Harper picks it up the transformation suppressed thoughts, “Scarlet would recommend it, if that wasn’t too close to a diagnostic treatment.” She turns to Dinah, a bit of worry on her face, “I had a question. What happens to this place after today? Once Arabella is... you know? Will Arabella’s Producer keep powering this place? Is there a plan to move everyone? The Garden is important and I want to help it continue.”

Dinah’s ears go still — not flat, not up, just still, the specific stillness of someone bracing before they answer a question they’ve been dreading being asked.

“Arabella told me two things,” she says, and her voice has dropped out of the doctor register into something rawer. “If Andy finds the loophole — and he hasn’t, last I knew — she thinks the Garden gets to flourish. Not just survive. Flourish. She didn’t tell me how, and I didn’t push, because Arabella doesn’t say things like that lightly and she doesn’t lie to me. Ever. Not once, since I came here.” She rubs at the back of her neck. “If he doesn’t find it — she said she has one more card. Enough to make sure we’re not destroyed outright. Enough that the Garden gets to wind down slow, over centuries, instead of just — stopping.” Her jaw tightens. “That’s it. That’s everything I have. I don’t know the mechanism. I don’t know what it costs her to make either of those things true. I just know she’s never once given me a promise she couldn’t keep, and this is the first time I’ve been scared that might not be up to her anymore.”

She looks at Scarlet, and something almost apologetic crosses her face. “For what it’s worth — I’ve had my hands full holding this place together for years without knowing the ending. I’m used to not knowing. Doesn’t make today easier.”

Then her eyes go back to Harper, and she lets herself actually look, the way she hasn’t quite let herself do all night — taking in the worry sitting behind Harper’s composure, the shoulder Scarlet’s still rubbing, all of it. Her tail flicks once, unhurried, and when she speaks again there’s a tremor under the dry surface that she doesn’t bother hiding this time.

“Can I ask you something else. Not about the Garden.” She hesitates, then pushes through it, because apparently three years of therapy sessions with other people’s trauma taught her nothing about handling her own. “Arabella and the Verant got every Host and Producer to sign a non-interference waiver, for today. When Ereshkigal shows up.” Her eyes don’t leave Harper's face. “Does that mean you’re staying to watch, even if you can’t help, or does it mean you’re required to leave the second things start? Because I would like to know which one I’m bracing for.”

“Ereshkigal? What’s that?” Jenny asks.

Jenny’s question isn’t going to be answered at the moment. Harper stares right back, the hurt in her eyes quite apparent, “As much as I would want to fight for Andy, I can’t. If things go down the way everyone thinks it will, we’ll be forced to watch from home or Svartlheim or somewhere else. It will hurt, but I will need to just let what happens happen. I do have kids here that need protecting. You saw most of them at the bachelorette party. I don’t think they are going to get caught in the crossfire but...”

Harper runs out of steam for a moment. Her hand has a slight tremor as she sips her cup of coffee. Scarlet asks, “Do you need a ride if it starts, at least until their endgame is done? Or someone to bar the elevator down here, just in case? I am sure Ms. E would...”

“Scarlet, if the Verant is not willing to protect this place and these people from harm, then I will get myself back here, paperwork be damned.”

“Seriously, Tyalangan, what are you talking about?” Jenny asks, more insistently.

“Today is not just a wedding, but Andy’s endgame challenge. All you need to know is that, when the shift happens, we’ll be off without a word. Don’t worry about it. The rest is just back room office politics.”

Dinah watches Harper’s hand shake around the coffee cup and doesn’t pretend not to notice.

“Hey.” She reaches out, not for the cup, just resting two fingers against Harper’s wrist, steady, clinical in the way that’s actually just tenderness wearing a white coat. “You don’t have to have an answer for her right now. Or for me.”

But then she straightens, because there’s a practical question underneath all of it that she can actually do something about, and doing something is easier than sitting in the fear. “The elevator down here stays open no matter what happens today. That’s not me being brave, that’s just fact — Arabella’s orders, or the Verant’s, I honestly don’t know which anymore, but nobody’s locking this place off from the rest of the Hotel. So if you’d rather not go all the way back to wherever home is right now, and you just want somewhere to sit that isn’t a waiting room — you can stay here. Watch from here, if watching’s allowed. I’ve got a window that looks out over the whole valley and about four pots of tea I never get through alone.”

She hesitates, and the next part comes out slower, like she’s turning it over even as she says it. “And if you do go — Svartalfheim, home, wherever — I want to know if you’re coming back. After. However it goes.” Her voice doesn’t quite hold steady on the last word. “I’m not asking as a courtesy, Harper. I’m asking because I’d like to actually know, because I’ve taught women here for years that missing someone isn’t the same as failing to get over them, and I’d like to have the chance to test that theory.”

She turns to Jenny. “Ereshkigal is a goddess of death. Laura’s resurrection incurred a debt, and today’s the day she collects, intertwined with Andy’s wedding. If Andy figures out the loophole – and as far as I know, he hasn’t yet – things may turn out well after all. If not... There’s a chance tonight there’ll be one less bride than there are at the wedding.”

Jenny gasps. Harper feels a little guilty about keeping Mona, Kevin, and Jenny in the dark about what’s going on, but she was hoping the whole thing would blow over. Stupid of me.

“If Ms. E and this Verant character will allow it, I would feel better if we watched here, love,” Scarlet answers, still trying to soothe Harper’s pain, “We can protect the residents if things spill over from upstairs.”

Harper lets out a long, deep sigh. She looks up first, stating, “Would us watching here violate the waiver? Need an answer, boss.” She then turns to Dinah. It takes a few beats to find the words. With a bit of shame, she answers, “If it is allowed, we will watch here. The heroine in me will insist on doing something and guarding the Garden from the challenge fallout will suffice. Also, while I truly will never be completely over you, you deserve whatever closure I can provide. And, if things go badly, I can get you to Andy’s world when the time comes, assuming that is still something you want to do.”

Scarlet continues to rub. Jenny looks a bit confused. Harper looks towards the dryad, noting, “Even Masters don’t get out of the game unscathed.”

Dinah goes very quiet.

She’s spent years being the person who sits calm across from other people’s worst days, the one with the steady hands and the dry joke ready to defuse a room. She doesn’t have one ready now. Her ears have drooped, just slightly, and her tail has stopped moving altogether, which for her is the equivalent of anyone else’s hands shaking.

“You don’t get to say ‘never completely over you’ and then hand me a decision about closure in the same breath, Harper.” It comes out rougher than she means it to, half a laugh caught in it that isn’t really a laugh at all. “That’s not fair. That’s not—” She stops, presses her lips together, tries again, slower. “I spent a long time telling myself I was over it. Then you wrote me a letter, and I didn’t sleep for two days, and I told myself that was just about the letter. Then you showed up at two in the morning holding coffee like nothing happened, and here we are.”

She looks at Scarlet, and there’s nothing but warmth there, easy and uncomplicated — whatever this is, it clearly was never a competition, not in Dinah’s head. “You I’ve never had to figure out how I feel about. You I just love, plain and simple, no homework required.” Then back to Harper, and it’s harder to hold that gaze steady. “You, I don’t know. I don’t think ‘closure’ is the word for whatever’s still sitting in my chest. Might be. Might be something else wearing its coat.”

She exhales, long, and rubs a hand down her face like she can wipe the last few minutes off it. “I don’t need an answer today. God knows today’s got enough riding on it without me adding my mess to the pile. But don’t you dare vanish through that elevator without finishing this conversation first, whichever way it ends up going. I’ve apparently waited a century for you to knock on a door. I can wait a little longer for you to sit still in a room.”

Her eyes flick, briefly, to the coffee in Harper’s shaking hand, and something more clinical and more caring than anything else surfaces for just a second. “Drink that before it goes cold. You need it more than the ceremony does.”

Scarlet rarely cries. She is now. Steam billows from her cheeks as they evaporate almost as soon as they are formed.

“‘Twas never hot.” Harper downs the rest of her coffee in one long pull. When she finishes it, she sends the mug back to her inventory, then squeezes Scarlet’s obsidian encrusted hand. Scarlet squeezes back. “Jenny, be a dear and go check on Katherine. If I remember yesterday’s footage right, Chloe wanted you to meet Eden. We’ll find you when we’re done.”

Dinah watches Jenny go, waits until she's out of easy earshot, then turns back and just looks at Harper for a long moment, the way she used to look at a chart before deciding what to say to the patient attached to it.

Harper waits until Jenny is on her way. She, teary-eyed, looks to Dinah. The elf’s scarred soul screams for the bit inside the woman before her. I need to be strong, to do what I can for her. It’s the least I can do. Another long sigh later, Harper declares, “We got time now, unless you’d rather talk while the world upstairs is imploding. I don’t want you suffering on my account one second longer than I have already caused you.”

“No,” she says finally, quiet. “Not while the world’s about to end. That’s not fair to either of us, and it’s definitely not fair to Andy, who deserves everyone’s whole attention today, not the leftovers of it.” She reaches up, almost without meaning to, and tucks a strand of hair back that hasn’t actually fallen anywhere, just needing something to do with her hand. “After. When it’s done, one way or the other. I’ll come find you, or you come find me, and we sit somewhere with actual chairs and I don’t have coffee going cold in my hand and neither do you.”

Her voice catches, just slightly, on the next part. “You didn’t cause me anything, Harper. You want to know the truth? I ran. That part was me. You panicked once, a long time ago, and made a mistake you clearly still carry around like a stone in your pocket — and I let that mistake be the whole story I told myself, for years, because it was easier than admitting the story had a second half where I just left before either of us figured out what came next.” She shakes her head, ears flicking. “So don’t apologize like you’re the only one holding something. We’re both walking in with baggage. I’d rather unpack it slow, with time on our side, than rush it because the world’s on fire.”

She glances toward Scarlet, still steaming faintly at the eyes, and something in her softens further. “Go be with your wives. Attend the wedding. When shit hits the fan, come watch over the Garden, like you said you would. I’ll be right here when it’s over — however ‘over’ looks.” A beat, then, quieter, almost to herself: “It better look like Andy and all his harem standing tall.”

“Amen to that,” Scarlet says, a bit louder.

Harper nods, not exactly satisfied, but accepting. Dinah’s conversation, Dinah’s rules. I have no right to force it. I just wish waiting didn’t hurt either of us so much. Harper stands a little bit jerkily. She squeezes Scarlet’s hand tighter for a moment, feeling the monk’s hand meet her grip. “You mind if Scarlet and I walk the grounds for a bit before heading back upstairs? Give Katherine and Eden their time?”

Dinah nods, relieved. “Of course. Feel free to visit the women you freed, too. Mildred can take you to them, if you need her help.” She smiles and adds, “Enjoy some peace before all Hell breaks loose.”

“We will talk before I head back home, I promise you that. Keep the mug. We’ll let you finish decompressing in peace. Maybe see you upstairs for the wedding?”

“Yeah. Not going to miss the party. Arabella said she’ll send me back here when Ereshkigal arrives.” She touches Harper's hand lightly. “I’ll see you there.”

As the two of them walk away, taking in the sight of the Garden at night, Harper leans on Scarlet a little heavier than usual, shoulders pressed together.

“She still loves me, after all this time?” Scarlet asks, voice wet with what would be tears. “What should I even do with that?”

“Treasure it. It’s a gift, one that...”

“Love, don’t. Just don’t. Put away the self-sacrifice. I can tell that you’re hurting. You’ll never heal if...”

Harper senses that transformation hitch in Scarlet’s voice. She doesn’t vocalize the thought, but she finishes it to herself anyways. I’ll never heal if I just keep putting it off because I don’t feel like I deserve it. I know. Maybe, before we leave, I can finally start.