“I know that I ended it, but / Why won’t you chase after me?”

 

What mattered was that Sybil seemed happy. At least, as happy as a person still mourning the recent loss of a loved one could be. A general sense of nostalgic melancholy hung over her, but Madelyn could tell this would be good for her. After years upon years, Sybil had finally gotten the closure she’d needed to heal and move on. Beyond that, she’d found the wight’s finger, so in more ways than one, Sybil had finally found what she was looking for. That much was clear from the way she carried herself; her eyes were solemn, her small smile sad and serious, but she kept her head high, exuding confidence and purpose with each step.

 

In a word, Sybil was present. Through the entire time Madelyn had known her, Sybil rarely felt fully grounded in one moment or another. That much was relatable, she struck Madelyn as someone who was as much in her own head as Madelyn was often in theirs. Yet seeing Sybil, calmly leaning against a nearby tree while she gave a last, long look at Illis’ tower, Madelyn saw someone who really, truly understood what she wanted, what she needed, what was possible. So why then did Sybil feel farther away than ever? Madelyn knew the answer to that question. if Sybil had all she needed, both in terms of the spell, and of her emotional wellbeing, then she didn’t really need Madelyn anymore, did she?

 

And that was a problem, because Madelyn wanted Sybil to need them. But at the same time, they wanted Sybil to be happy with the person she was actually meant to be with. Ever since Sybil had opened up about just how alone she felt without her would-be lover, Madelyn had struggled not to see their own intrusion into Sybil’s life as a hollow distraction. The kiss had, in the grand scheme of things, only made it worse. At first, of course, Madelyn had been elated, flying high on endorphins. But when things calmed down, they realized that, if Sybil really were starting to feel that way for them, all they were really doing was depriving her the opportunity of being with someone who could make her happier. They didn’t want Sybil to have to choose between the person she was meant to be with, and the person who was there. 

 

And what even came next? Madelyn had been avoiding that question in this new world about as much as they had back on Earth. Getting through each day was easy enough when their path and purpose were laid out before them like they had been, but it wasn’t as though they could stay with Sybil, live as some awkward third wheel. And how would that even work? Would Sybil just cast the spell, summon her lover, and go, “Hello, I’m your true love. Also, this is Madelyn. They’re also here.” No part of Madelyn wanted to have to live through that. It would be stiflingly uncomfortable, not to mention painful, to simply watch as Sybil hollowed out the place Madelyn had occupied in her life, then replaced her with the person who was meant to be there all along. Honestly, after everything the two had been through together, after everything Madelyn had done for Sybil, they were almost feeling a little shafted. At the same time, though, this was what they signed up for. The helping part, not the falling in love part.

 

With a soft, wistful sigh, Sybil stirred, righting herself, and turning to Madelyn. “I think I’m ready. To go home, I mean. I’ll probably come back here, at least a few times. There are a few things in there which hold sentimental value, also a few things I think she’d want me to have.” Trembling, her eyes fell, voice growing strained. “Also, I think I’d like to do something, have a proper ceremony for her. I don’t know. And if you would come with me, that would mean a lot.”

 

“You mean, you still want me around after this?” Asking felt silly, overly needy. Madelyn knew Sybil was fond of them. But things were about to change, and fast. Their anxieties about being left behind were hardly unfounded.

 

“Madelyn, of course I do.” No hint of sarcasm, of hesitation, of distaste for their question or they themself hung in Sybil’s voice. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but was nice anyway. Not that it changed anything.

 

“You have everything you need, though, right?” Like it or not, Madelyn knew the end was near. And she had to go, before that storm of emotions came and blew her apart. Sybil didn’t seem to see it that way, though. 

 

“I do. All the reagents are here now, for certain this time. I can cast the spell as soon as we get home.” Something about her use of ‘we’ and ‘home’ tore at Madelyn. “But listen, there’s this thing. A hunch I have about the spell. I need to talk to you about something, about after.”

 

“I’m sorry, Sybil. I think I have to say no.” Those words hurt, a lot. And they were almost certain to hurt Sybil. Which hurt more, and got Madelyn properly pissed at themself for doing it. Something about the way Sybil had said they needed to talk had set Madelyn off, though. It wasn’t foreboding or anything. Mostly, Sybil just sounded warm, still solemn from all she’d been through, but optimistic, hopeful. And that was all well and good. Madelyn wanted Sybil to feel those things. But whatever Sybil wanted to talk about wasn’t the same as what she needed. And Madelyn wasn’t about to get in the way of her finding the latter.

 

“What do you mean, no?” On cue, the hurt Madelyn had expected started to creep into her voice, brand new wounds to go on top of the others she’d just gotten. Sybil deserved better than this.

 

“We can’t.” That wasn’t right. “I can’t.”

 

“Madelyn, you’re not—”

 

“I am, Sybil. I don’t belong here. Your home can’t be mine. For so long I’ve been just following, been doing what others want me to do. And it’s not just you, it was on Earth, too. I haven’t done anything for me in a long time. I don’t even know what I want.” That wasn’t entirely true; Madelyn knew exactly what they wanted, but they couldn’t have it. “And right now, I don’t fully even understand who I am. I think I need to go. Not forever, but at least for a while. Need to think.”

 

“Please, not you, Madelyn.” Of course, of course leaving would hurt so much. Sybil had only just started to process being left behind by Illis, and now she thought it was happening again. This would be the last time, though. She was about to find that one person who never would, never could let her down. And that, at least, was a comfort. It didn’t make them any less angry at themself for making Sybil feel this way.

 

“You’ll see me again, Sybil. I promise.”

 

Apparently, their words hadn’t helped much. If anything, Sybil seemed more antagonized. “What, so I can send you home? Back to Earth?” Her hand flew in a far off gesture, away from her, out of reach; that was all that really mattered to Sybil.

 

Shaking their head, Madelyn tried to suppress the quaking they felt through their whole body, it wasn’t much use. Something inside was starting to snap. “I don’t know, okay? I have too many questions that need answering and I’ve been too fucking busy risking my life to get you a girlfriend to answer them.” Why? Why say that? Why take it out on Sybil? “You didn’t deserve that.”

 

Surprisingly, something about why they’d said seemed to strike in a way nothing else had, though. Sybil was nodding, she didn’t look pleased with the situation, but she seemed to understand. “Maybe I did. You know, a while ago, you said I should work on myself, grow before I did the summoning. I think I needed to go through what I just did to get on that path. But I’m on it now. And I know that might not be enough. Still, I’m sorry for all the times I asked too much of you.”

 

Only after Sybil had said all that did Madelyn realize just how much they needed to hear that. Their own breaths started to calm. They could do this. Not just for Sybil, but for themself. “I’m glad you’re starting to heal, genuinely. And for the record, I’m grateful for the role I got to play in that, however small.”

 

“It wasn’t—”

“Let me finish, please. I care about you a lot, Sybil. And that’s part of why I need to go. When it happens, when she comes through, I can’t be there. It would hurt too much. I’m sorry I got angry. But I’ll only get worse if I don’t do this. We’ve been through so much these past few days. And I’ve had almost no time to think about me. I need to step away from all this.” They took a moment; admitting the next part was still hard. “I need to understand myself better. But I’ll be back, because you’re my friend. And I want you to be a part of my life.” Slowly, Madelyn stooped and picked up their travel pack, fishing out their compass, gazing at it, then glancing down the trail.

 

Sybil’s hand caught their arm. “Madelyn, wait. Remember back at the beginning of all this, I said that if you helped me, I’d give you a wish? We never really sorted out the details. But I know there’s something you want. Just name it, whatever it is, please.” 

 

“I can’t have the thing I want most.” At that, Sybil hung her head in defeat, Madelyn reached to squeeze her arm. “When I come back, though, I’ll have a wish for you.”

 

Silence fell, both wanting to say far more than they ever could. Sybil found her words first, speaking with slow uncertainty. “I know you already promised, but please, Madelyn. Just—I can’t go through that again.”

 

“I promise.” They didn’t hesitate. And they meant it.

 

“Are you going to be able to find your way? I don’t want you to get lost.”

 

Madelyn smiled, and squeezed her hand one more time, “You’re stalling, Sybil.” And that was it. There was really only one thing left to say. “Good luck. With her, I mean.”

 

Madelyn turned, and walked away. They didn’t know where they were going, but they remembered that the main road through the forest was due south. It would take them into town, if that’s what they wanted. And eventually, when they were ready, it could take them back to Sybil. So they walked, and they kept walking as their vision blurred, as their breath caught in their throat, as choked, shuddering sobs escaped their lips. Then they stopped walking, and found themself collapsing onto a nearby tree stump, face in their hands. Madelyn wanted Sybil, wanted her so bad. 

 

Someone else got to have her though. Got to be her girlfriend instead of Madelyn. And that fucking sucked, because she wanted to be Sybil’s girlfriend more than anything. Without warning, as though her whole sense of self had been teetering on the edge of a cliff, that thought sent her mind plummeting into the deep, dark depths of having to look really, really hard at things that were actually very obvious, if they weren’t so convenient to ignore. Madelyn wanted to be a girl—or at least, a distinctly feminine person. Things still felt a little fuzzy in that department—and, according to people who’d spent a lot more time thinking about how all this worked, wanting to be a girl and being a girl could be seen as the same thing. But was that good enough?

 

Ditching that old name had been easy, Shakespeare could go fuck himself, the rose smelled a lot sweeter this way. But there was a difference between being called something else and being something else. Could Madelyn really see themself, herself, as a woman? Maybe, hopefully, but she doubted this sort of thing was just magically settled overnight. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be that way for her; Madelyn was hardly known for doing things quickly, cleanly and easily. At least she could own the fact that she was a mess, though. Plus, they could hardly ignore the fact that she had felt a thousand times more comfortable in a more feminine-coded body. And, more importantly, no, most importantly, even if just wanting to be a woman wasn’t enough for Madelyn, it had certainly seemed to be enough for Sybil.

 

It was impossible to forget the fact that, on that night, when Sybil had linked minds with Madelyn just before the cult attacked, she had felt that Sybil saw her as a woman. In fact, that truth, and how it had made Madelyn feel, had been quietly playing background ambience in her head ever since. Ignoring it was just a lot harder now that everything else was quiet. And that was just the beginning of it, really. Sybil had been giving her those soulful looks for days, the sort Madelyn was quite sure she would only give other women. And then there was the fact that Sybil had fucking kissed her. Just did it. On the lips. There might have even been tongue. So clearly, Sybil had seen things in Madelyn which she couldn’t yet see in herself. Which begged the question, what else had Sybil seen?

 

Because people don’t just kiss other people on the fucking lips out of the blue for no reason. They don’t have an emotional breakdown upon hearing that a friend they’d known for barely more than a week and a half or so—a friend they’d spent nearly every waking moment with, and whom, by this point, they should probably be getting a little tired of—needed to take a bit of time to herself and figure herself out. And maybe Madelyn was oversimplifying things, and probably, actually some people did do those things. But it certainly wasn’t common for them to just happen, and crucially, they didn’t happen without good reason. 

 

If Madelyn really thought about it, the list of ‘good’ reasons why that kind of stuff might happen was actually pretty short, especially when it came to the kiss. Admitting that was scary, and felt like it had to be wrong, like there had to be some other, far more convoluted reason for those things happening. But for so many years, Madelyn’s first instinct had been to make things way more complicated than they ever needed to be. Given that, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to oversimplify once in a while. Occam’s razor, and all that. 

 

So, if she did that, if she oversimplified, what did it all mean? For one, it meant that Madelyn was girl-adjacent—probably—and, apparently, it meant that she suddenly felt better for having admitted that to herself. Like, a lot better, not just emotionally, but also about herself as a person with wants and needs and feelings that mattered. A person who deserved to have those feelings heard. Even if she and Sybil weren’t ‘meant to be’ or whatever, it didn’t make what Madelyn wanted any less real or important. Because, yeah, there was no way she could deny the fact that she really, really, liked Sybil. And not the friend kind of like, either; it was the kind which historians would spend their whole lives speculating about. 

 

But that one was easy, she’d known that already. The harder one to accept—even with the oversimplification—was that Sybil, a woman who had kissed her, stared longingly at her, held her hand, cuddled with her, cried in her arms and sought her emotional support in her time of greatest vulnerability, probably liked Madelyn too? Because those things were meaningful, and they didn’t just happen for no reason. So, if Madelyn liked Sybil, and Sybil liked Madelyn, then maybe Madelyn should talk to her about it? Fuck. It was gonna be awkward. Especially following her dramatic exit. Apologies were probably in order, too. More apologies, that was. Still, the tree-stump she was sitting on wasn’t all that comfortable, anyway.

 

Madelyn stood, and started walking home.