8FOLD: Pulse War Special # 4, "The Midnight Peace"

[Amabel Holland]

  This is the song of Belden's betrayal:
  This is how we lost a thousand earths.

     - Ezra Hunter (2891 - 2929)

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         THE MIDNIGHT PEACE
              BY AMABEL HOLLAND

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

KATE MORGAN, age 30, she/her.
The Queen of Cups.

CLAIRE BELDEN, age 30, she/her.
The Betrayer.

TRINITY TRAN, age 35, she/her.
The Mother.

MAILE AKAKA, age 20, she/her.
The Fighter.

BETHANY CLAYTON, age 32, she/her.
The Paradox Heart.


At some point, Kate's eyes turned green. They were hazel before, brown
in this light and green in that one, and maybe that's what made it
difficult to detect the color shifting. But now, they are wholly,
certainly, and undeniably green. A darker green, green like her
costume, green like Claire's costume, Claire's green.

   As she studies her eyes in her bedroom's reflecting pool, Kate
wonders why her eyes turned green. Is it a Queen of Cups thing, some
ancient magic pulsing in her veins? Is it something Claire left behind
when the two of them were mixed together? (Are they still mixed
together? Will there always be traces of Claire lingering in Kate, and
traces of Kate in Claire?)

   "I think so," says Claire. Kate finds her sitting on the corner of
the bed. "Green suits you, anyway."

   "It suits your image of me," says Kate icily.

   Claire winces, then changes the subject. "Is this the part where
you ask me how I got into your room, why I'm here, so on and so
forth?"

   "We can skip all that," says Kate. "Anyway, I know why you're here.
You told me you'd be back on the solstice. And, here we are. The
solstice."

   "No questions, then? We're going to skip the little game where you
pretend you don't trust me? That you don't know me. That I don't know
you."

   "Do you?"

   "We've been inside each other, Kate." Claire reaches with her
gloved hand, touching Kate's cheek. "Tangled up, so it's hard to see
where one starts and the other ends. And even once we got untangled,
pieces of one another linger. So of course we know each other better
than anyone else ever has, or ever will."

   Kate gently grabs hold of Claire's wrist, and pulls the hand away.
But she doesn't let it go. "I understand you better now, sure. Which
is exactly why I don't trust you."

   "But you trust me enough to know I'm not the villain. That I
haven't hatched some mad, evil scheme or that I'm going to doom us
all."

   Kate nods.

   "I'm going to tell you something I admire about you, Kate. You
always do the right thing, no matter what it costs you. And I always
do what needs to be done, even when it isn't right. That used to be
easier for me. Before you got inside. A conscience is a damn
inconvenient thing."

   "So, which are we doing today?"

   "What needs doing," says Claire. "It's a terrible thing, but it's necessary."

   "Sacrificing lives for the greater good. I can't be part of that."

   "Oh, I didn't say that, Kate. I said it was terrible. And it is.
But nobody dies this time. Well. Except for me, that is."

()

Trinity tests the pool with a single toe, and finds it warm and
inviting. She nods to Gail. The teenager helps her remove the gown and
carefully lowers her into the water.

   Then, she begins to lay her wards around the birthing pool. Gail is
unhurried and studious, but there's a nervousness under the surface.

   Trinity grits her teeth through the next contraction before
speaking. "Are you scared of me, Gail?"

   The girl smiles in flushed embarrassment, at first unsure of what
to say. "Of course I am, Miss Tran."

   It's a good answer. Even the expected one. When Trinity herself
began working at The Company, it's how she would have answered if an
executive asked. It's the sort of answer they would have relished. A
perverse pleasure.

   It's one she catches herself enjoying now. That should mean
something, shouldn't it? That should disturb her. There should be a
shock of conscience, a discomfort.

   But instead, there's only the wicked pleasure of the girl's fear,
undiluted by guilt or morality. Trinity luxuriates in it while staring
at her swollen belly.

   "The wards are done," says Gail.

   "Good." She watches the girl's face. Gail clearly expects to be
dismissed. She's waiting for it. When it doesn't come, confusion sets
in: should she just go? Or is Trinity waiting for her to ask?

   Gail looks up at her boss, that last question in her frightened
eyes, and the only response is a sly smile. It takes a moment for Gail
to work up the courage. "May I go, Miss Tran?"

   "Dismissed. Return just after noon. I should be done by then." She
watches the girl leave, relishing the way she wants to run but doesn't
dare. Trinity will have to send her some little thing after. The fear
has a certain thrill to it and she's certain she'll enjoy indulging
now and then, but as a corporate culture it breeds disloyalty and
insecurity.

   That's not the future she wants. Not the future she's fought and schemed for.

   "Not the future I will give to you," she says to her belly.

()

Kate remembers leaving her room but doesn't remember how. She
remembers talking to Claire while they travelled, but doesn't remember
what it was about. This sort of thing used to bother her quite a bit.
She can't say it's something she's ever gotten acclimated to. It'd be
like getting used to someone habitually slipping a knife between your
ribs. And it hasn't really gotten less disorienting, but she's come to
expect disorienting, and that makes some kind of difference she can't
quite explain.

   Before them is a collection of delicate towers and spirals, a
structure of translucent blue glass rising from ice and snow.

   "The teardrop palace," remembers Kate, though the memory isn't
hers. That's not the first time that's happened, and she knows it
won't be the last. Quite suddenly she finds herself resenting that.
Resenting the magic in her veins. Resenting Claire. "I'll never
forgive you."

   "I know," says Claire. "I'll never ask you to, either."

   "Will you tell me why?"

   Claire points to the palace. "This is why. Here and now."

   "You need me to do something."

   "I need the Queen of Cups to do something," says Claire. "And for
that there needed to be a Queen of Cups."

   "So you locked me in a mirror for years, so I could teach myself magic."

   "So you'd be a good candidate if a new queen was needed. Then, I
made sure one was needed."

   "By opening the mouths of hell."

   Claire actually seems apologetic. "It was the easiest apocalyptic
threat I could think of. I'm confident you'll be able to handle it."

   "Thank you," says Kate with a withering glare.

   Claire looks wounded. "I mean that, Kate," she says quietly. "I
hold you in very high regard. I thought that much would be obvious by
now."

   Kate nods, eager to avoid the conversation Claire wants to have. By
the time she finishes the nod, she realizes they're right in front of
the palace, close enough to reach out and touch it. She doesn't
remember walking closer. "So, why are we here?"

   "To end the midnight war. The war with the Pulse, too, if we're lucky."

   The midnight war. In time before time, the first Queen of Cups
sealed dread Venus with a mystical lullaby, and since then, three
factions have fought in secret.

   The circle, to end the threat of Venus, and with it, the gift of magic.

   The Company, to break the lullaby and bring about the destruction
of the earth.

   The blue lady, who seeks to keep the other two equally opposed,
because as long as the midnight war rages, magic exists.

   The Company has had the upper hand as of late. They've broken the
lullaby, though Venus itself has been slow to fully waken.

   All this floods into Kate, a mix of memories: some are hers, things
she's learned; some are Claire's, lingering; some are something else,
an ancient magic that has made its home in her veins.

   "End it, for which side? Not The Company."

   "No. We're here to save the world, not doom it."

   Kate intuits something. "But not the circle, either."

   "The world needs magic. There are other threats only a spell can counter."

   "So, the blue lady."

   "I doubt she'll see it that way," says Claire. "Her power comes
from the stalemate. But sooner or later one of them would win, and
either we'd lose magic or we'd lose the world. It's unsustainable."

   Kate sighs. Claire loves riddles and cryptic clues too much. Her
own fault for playing along. "Alright. So tell me how you save the
world, and magic."

   "We're going to steal fire from the heavens." Claire grins, and in
her hands appear two swords: the twin Thirteens. "And to our larceny,
we'll add a little deicide."

   "You're just never going to give me a straight answer, will you?"

   "There are two things that have ever really threatened Venus. One
is this sword. This swords? These swords."

   "One's from the future."

   "One's from the future, yes, so now I have two of them."

   "What's the other thing?"

   "The necromancer."

   Kate nods. While she was busy with her own mystical destiny
nonsense, the circle and The Company had joined forces to defeat an
ancient evil that had been lurking in the memories of Claire's dead
father. (God, give her pure simple superhero nonsense any day! It has
to be better than this magic stuff.) "Which you killed."

   "With this sword," says Claire, hoisting the one in her left.

   "This swords," says Kate, pointing to the other. "You killed it
with the one from our time, so you also killed it with the one from
the future? Is that how time travel works?"

   "It does when I'm borrowing time magic from Pam Bierce."

   "You have the two things that can kill the gods of Venus in one,"
realizes Kate. "Twice over."

   "Should be more than enough," says Claire.

   There's a sudden rush, like dominoes falling. "And the Pulse."

   "Yes, the Pulse."

   "They want Earth because it lets them cross over to other universes."

   "And the walls between realities are only so porous because of Venus."

   "You kill the gods."

   "The walls close," says Claire. "We then have nothing the Pulse wants."

   There's a question in Kate's brain. Something queasy and urgent.
But then she realizes that they're inside the palace now. The question
slips away like a dream upon waking. It's replaced with another
thought. "You couldn't have planned all this."

   "No," says Claire. "Six months ago, there weren't two Thirteens.
That changed everything. Taking down Anders Cradle, giving you magic,
bringing back the necromancer so we could kill him? None of that was
on my radar last year. I didn't really have a plan until, oh, early
January I suppose? What a strange handful of months it's been."

   Kate remembers something. "You said you were going to die."

   "Oh, yes! This will be extremely fatal." She seems almost pleased
about it. Then she gets quiet and soft. "Don't pretend you're going to
miss me, Kate." Claire looks at her expectantly.

   "What do you want from me? Do you want me to argue with you? 'Oh,
no, Claire, you've got it all wrong, I will miss you.' Or do you want
me to agree with you? Tell you how much I hate you?"

   Claire looks pained. Embarrassed. "Either of those. Both of those?
Love me or hate me, love me and hate me. Just. You meant something to
me. You have to know that. I want to have meant something to you."

   "Why, Claire? Why do I mean something to you?"

   "We've been through a lot."

   "You put us through a lot," corrects Kate. "But even when we first
met, you were," she stops, searching for the word. All the ones that
come to mind are too clumsy.

   But Claire knows what she means, and nods. "I was, yes. I felt this
pull. The gravity of you. And right from the start, you were," she
searches for the word, and finds it. "Repulsed. Everyone else, you let
them into your orbit. But not me."

   Kate affirms this with a sympathetic shrug. "You felt wrong.
Dangerous." It feels cruel to say it. She tries something kinder. "And
you were sad." In retrospect, this is even crueler. And then, in that
moment, a thought occurs to her, something too terrible to say aloud.

   Claire sees the impulse in the corner of Kate's eyes. "Go ahead,"
she says, trembling and soft. "You won't have another chance."

   "My mother was like that. Dangerous and sad."

   "So you kept me out?"

   Kate shakes her head. "We both know it's not as simple as that.
That people aren't as simple as that. Cause and effect. This therefore
that. But maybe that was part of it."

   "You loved your mom?"

   "I wanted to," says Kate. "I reached out to her. I tried. And every
time I paid for it. I think even the day she tried to drown me, part
of me would have let her do it, if that meant she would love me back."
Annoying little tears starts to well up in the corners of her eyes.
She gently slaps them away with her palm. "Even after she died, I kept
trying to love her, and it just left me twisted up and raw inside.
Sometimes I tried to hate her, but I couldn't do it."

   "And one day," says Claire, "you decided to feel sorry for her,
instead." Claire closes her eyes, bringing into focus Kate's lingering
memories. "And it was a decision. You remember it clearly. You
remember saying the words to yourself. That you were going to pity her
from now on.
"
   "It made her bearable," says Kate. "Reduced her to something I
could understand. Something that couldn't keep hurting me."

   "Pity is a kinder sort of hate."

   "I suppose it is," says Kate. That's when she realizes that, more
than anything, she feels sorry for Claire.

   Claire realizes it too. Without saying another word, she starts
drawing symbols in the air with her fingertips. Kate is about to ask
what she should be doing to help, but finds there's no need; she
already knows, is already activating glyphs and breaking seals,
instinctively, intuitively.

   And that's a thing she tries not to think about, how easy this is.
Because nothing ever comes easy to Kate. Everything she's learned,
it's always been brute force. Nothing has ever felt "right", it's all
been learned and memorized. And yet, here she is shifting the mystical
equivalent of tectonic plates like it's air in her lungs or blood in
her veins.

   Sooner than she expected, they've finished. The palace is awash in
a thousand strands of light, carefully knotted together to form
circles within circles, circles across circles, points of light
gathered like stars circling the center: and in that center, Claire
stands holding both swords, both aglow. Everything gets brighter for
the briefest of moments. Incredibly bright, blinding.

   In that whiteness, Kate sees flashes of red and of green, sees
hints of eyes and teeth, claws and vines. In a fraction of a second,
she witnesses the genocide of the old gods. She was expecting it to be
something astonishing, something incredible, but instead it is
something small and sad. As with Claire, Kate feels sorry for them.

   Now the light is gone, and Claire is laying on the ground, still
clutching the two swords. Kate rushes to her. She cradles Claire's
head in her hand.

   Claire looks up, but Kate can't tell if she's looking at her or
past her. "I'm sorry," says Claire.

   "You did it," says Kate.

   Claire groans. "No," she says as she closes her eyes. "I'm sorry
about Simon."

   And now Kate remembers the thing that had been bothering her. The
thing that she now knows that Claire had made her forget until now.
Until after they had killed the gods of Venus and permanently locked
the door between our Earth and others: Kate's brother was on the other
side.

   She wants to yell and scream, but it's no use. Claire is dead.

()

Trinity's son cries out, angry and red-wrinkled, furious and scared.
"Just like your father," she says before naming the child after him.

   She kisses David's forehead, than hands the baby off to Gail. The
girl wants to ask, don't you want to hold him? Trinity can read the
question in the awkwardness of her lower lip, the anxious trembling of
her shoulders.

   "There's another," Trinity says flatly. And in the space of a few
minutes, she has given birth to a daughter. The baby doesn't cry, and
Trinity worries that something has gone wrong.

   But the baby is very much alive. She is breathing. Her eyes are
open. She looks at Trinity intensely, quietly, as if trying to figure
out what she is, and while she stares, her hazel eyes slowly and
surely become a deep, dark green.

   "Hello, Claire."

()

Two weeks later. Cal Morgan turns eighteen. Kate attends her sibling's
party at the Lighthouse, flanked on one side by her partner, Jonah,
and on the other by her Knight of Cups, Bassina Bootblack.

   "A lot of people," says Jonah. He's right. Besides the members of
Cal's team, there's a number of other long underwear types, friends
Cal has made during various adventures. "She makes friends easily."

   "They," corrects Kate. She does it immediately, without thinking.
There was a time when she wouldn't have bothered. Hell, there were
times when she slipped herself. "They make friends easily."

   And Kate takes a moment to marvel at that. Because it was never
true before. Kate and Simon were always the socialites. With Cal,
everything was so awkward. Always pushing people away.

   And now, Kate looks at them, and sees them smiling, sees them
beaming, sees the connections they've made. As if to highlight the
point, she spots Maile Akaka across the room. Cal was the one that
brought the circle and the Daylighters together in the first place.

   Kate greets Maile with a gentle hug. "How's the recovery?"

   "Going well enough. I'll be back to my chipper self in a few weeks, I think."

   "Good thing the midnight war is over, then."

   "I guess," says Maile. "The last time I saw Trini Tran, few days
before the solstice, she warned me to keep what's left of the circle
off their radar, then they won't come looking for us. Elder gods might
be dead, maybe the world isn't ending. But I'm not expecting The
Company to turn over a new leaf, are you?"

   Kate thinks for a moment. Remembers for a moment. In a sort of a
sideways way, she knows that Trinity Tran was Claire's right hand, and
that the two of them spent the last several months consolidating power
within The Company. Power Tran intends to use. "Be careful."

   Maile smirks. "Not really my style, but I'll try."

()

Kate finds Bethany high up in the gallery, looking out across the
lake. It's so strange, seeing her in costume but without her gauntlet.
She doesn't look weaker. Bethany's strength never came from the
gadget. But she doesn't look right. Even the way she carries her body,
the way she leans against the railing, looks apprehensive.

   "How are you doing?"

   Bethany looks at her: big eyes, bitter smile. "I'm doing."

   "Do you want to talk about it?"

   "Which it? The glove?" Bethany holds up her bare arm. "No,
absolutely not. The, um." She taps her chest. "The paradox heart?
Turns out I'm the big end of the world broken future threat we've been
scared of this entire time? Not a chance."

   "We can always talk about your crush on Julie."

   The smile cracks like a sidewalk. "You need to stop teasing me
about that, okay?"

   "Okay," says Kate softly.

   "I talked to Regina White."

   "Remind me who that is again?"

   "Space espionage, for the war. She in turn has talked to the high
mucky-mucks. About the solstice. By the way, she liked your report.
Said your prose was excellent."

   This was the first time in a long time that Kate had written it
herself. Usually Simon helped her punch it up.

   "So, what's the word? Peace talks?"

   Bethany's face turns sour. She shakes her head. "No, we keep fighting."

   "But they have nothing to fight us for anymore," says Kate. "Gates
are closed. Surely, the Pulse will give in."

   "Probably would," says Bethany. "We've squeezing enough
chokepoints. Their empire is suffocating. Starving. There are
uprisings. Political instability. They'd jump at the chance to end the
pain, especially now that there's nothing for them on the other side
of all this. But."

   Kate puts her hand on Bethany's and waits.

   "But," she continues. "We're not really the ones doing the
fighting, are we? There's ninety other armies from ninety other earths
out in space doing the fighting for us. To protect their homes. Their
families. And now they're never going to see those families again. We
locked the door behind them. What do you think they're going to do to
us if they find out?"

   "If? That's a when."

   Bethany nods grimly. "We're supposed to keep it a secret until the
war is over. The story's going to be that the Pulse did it. A
desperate last act as the walls were closing in. They won't forgive
the Pulse for it. Lot of anger. Lot of soft targets. You can probably
fill in the rest."

   Kate covers her mouth. A sickness swells in her belly.

   "I hate it," says Bethany. "I hate it. Hate it with my whole heart.
With everything that I am." She clenches the railing, and the air
around her glows black and furious. "But it'll be us if it isn't
them." She unclenches and looks at her friend. "I'm so tired, Kate. I
feel so hollow."

   Kate nods, hugging her quietly.

()

One day, twenty years from now, Simon's daughter will ask him if he
missed the place where he was born. And he'll have to think about it
before telling her that no, not really. Oh, there are people who he
misses.

   Kate, the sister who raised him. Cal, the sibling he never quite
understood. Melody, who he loved, though he knew she didn't quite love
him back, and that was okay, then: that was enough. (He won't tell his
daughter all that, though.)

   But the place itself? No. He doesn't miss the parade of apocalyptic
catastrophes, alien invasions, and villainous plots, all narrowly
thwarted. It takes a toll, always waiting for some new crisis, always
wondering if this will be the one that swallows everything up. Simon
didn't realize how much of a toll it was until he crossed over with
the other volunteers. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was
building shelters, cleaning up the wreckage from the floods, making
sure people had food. Those were big things, sure, but it's a change
of pace from a world that was always threatening to end. That threat
always felt more immediate, and he felt more powerless, because
practically everyone he knew was always pulling last-minute rabbits
out of eleventh-hour hats.

   They always did find that rabbit, though. And so when she asks her
father if he worries about the people he left behind, he can honestly
answer: no, not especially, not more than he worries about her and her
mother.

   "Probably they're worried about me, though," he tells her. "Even if
I could, I'd never go back. You're too important to me." He kisses her
forehead. "But I wish there was a way to tell them I'm okay. I'd like
to see Kate one more time."

   They will meet again, once and only once. He'll be a grandfather by
then. The meeting will be brief, and he will tell her a secret. She'll
wish she had heard it before. It would have made so many things so
much easier.

   But that's a story for another time.

COPYRIGHT 2023 AMABEL HOLLAND