They had a week to prepare, and Lacy wanted to use as much of that week as possible for training. And so, the next day, she rolled out of bed and plodded through the full bore of her raging hangover and went over to Gwen and Quentin’s room.

Lacy braced herself for Gwen’s ‘mistress of pain’ monologue… Only to hear Quentin utter, “Now then, dirty girl, you are going bend over.”

“Yes master,” Gwen breathed.

“Good. Now spread ‘em!”

Good for them. Variety is the spice of life, Lacy thought. 

Then she knocked, and quickly thereafter she heard Quentin say, “Safeword.”

Gwen quickly added, “Dang it. Just a sec, Lacy!”

It was more than a sec. It was at least a dozen secs, probably significantly more. Finally, Gwen, her hair a mess of bedhead, a leather corset clearly visible underneath her bathrobe, answered the door. “Hi.”

“Hi. I, uh, was hoping we could train today.”

“Of course, of course. Just give me a bit- I need to shower.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Lacy smirked. 

Gwen chuckled. “Don’t be a little shit. I’ll meet you in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

“Can we eat breakfast first- my head is throbbing.”

“Yeah, no prob. Get us a seat at the buffet.”

Lacy obliged, and when Gwen joined her downstairs Lacy had sat herself at a table by the window in the white and gray restaurant. She had piled her plate full of bacon, potatoes, fruit, and pastries and had shoveled half of it down her gullet by the time Gwen sat down. 

“How you doing, kiddo?” Gwen asked, a smug smile on her face. 

“I feel like death.” I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. I feel like my parents.

“How much did you drink?”

“Is it that obvious?” Lacy asked. 

“To me? Yes. Very much so. So how much-”

“Seven or eight shots of whiskey. Maybe nine.” Just like them. 

“How-”

“Probably some spritzers, too. And a few beers. Danny must’ve found every drop of hooch in Illinois.” Fucking hell why did I do that why why why-

“I’m surprised you can put away that much,” Gwen said. 

“I’m Irish. It’s my heritage. Un-fucking-fortunately.” Fucking pathetic island trash.

The hotel staff all shot her flabbergasted looks. Lacy grunted. 

“Yeah, you might want some coffee,” Gwen said. 

“No. Literally anything but that.” Kill me. 

“How do you not like coffee?” Gwen asked. 

“I like having my stomach lining intact.” Can practically hear Mom lecturing me over her bottle of white wine right now. 

“Says the girl who drank an entire liquor store last night.”

“Uhhhhhh,” Lacy groaned as she ate a whole muffin in one bite. 

“Oh well then,” Gwen said. She left the table, and when she returned, she had a bagel and lox with a tall mug of hot black coffee. 

Lacy balked at her mentor’s taste in breakfast. “Sometimes you sicken me, Gwen.”

“Sometimes I sicken myself,” Gwen laughed, stealing a muffin from Lacy’s plate. And then a waiter came over a glass of cold black liquid and placed it in front of Lacy. 

“What the fuck is this?” Lacy said. 

The waiter said, “Language, young man.”

“I’m a girl, jackass.”

“Oh, my apologies. Language, young lady.”

“Fine. What the heck is this, kind sir?”

“Cold brew coffee, ordered for you by your friend.”

Lacy side-eyed Gwen. 

“Drink up,” Gwen said, taking a sip of her own hot mug. 

Lacy obliged, and for the first time sampled a coffee she didn’t immediately wish to spit out. “This is… Actually kinda good.”

“Yeah, I had them add a lot of sugar for you,” Gwen said. 

“‘Cause I’m so sweet?” Lacy monotoned. God I’m a hypocrite. 

Gwen clapped her on the shoulder. “Now you’re gettin’ it!”

Lacy slowly drank the rest of her coffee, and by the time she’d finished it and another plate full of greasy buffet food, her head had stopped feeling like a patch of street recently acquainted with a road roller. 

Gwen paid the bill, and they headed out. “Feelin’ better?”

“Much. God, I’m never doing that again.” Seriously, me, don’t ever fucking do that again. Not one drop. Ever. 

“Fffff.”

“What?”

“Ah, just a feeling I know real well.” They walked out into the parking lot.

Lacy’s brow furrowed. They found one of the Winnebagos, climbed aboard. Gwen reached for the ignition, keys in hand. Shame burned through Lacy once again, followed by resentment. Followed by a question that had been on her mind for a few weeks now, one she’d taken great care not to ask. But given they probably only had a week left to live, now seemed like a good time. “Are you an alcoholic?” 

Gwen’s hand stayed stuck with the key in the ignition. “Lacy-”

“That was rude, wasn’t it?” Lacy, you idiot.

“Yeah, you can’t really go around asking people that.”

“Why not?”

Gwen started the car and began the process of driving them out into the Illinois sprawl. “Because it’s inappropriate.”

“Why? It seems like a relevant question,” Lacy said, fidgeting in her seat. They drove through weaves of automobiles, the clamor of the city drowning individual heartbeats in a percussive slush. 

Gwen took them off main street and onto a sideroad, plunging southeast. “Because it’s personal, Lacy. Really personal. Involves stuff that-”

Lacy rolled her eyes. “Gwen, there’s a lot of personal stuff going around lately.”

“What does that mean?”

An aftershock of her hangover barraged the inside of Lacy’s skull. She had to say it- it was becoming way too pressing not to say it. “That a lot of it seems to come back to you.”

“... My family is involved in this, yes.”

It’s been months since you started teaching me and you still speak in vagaries half the time. “Yeah, and you get real touchy about it whenever anyone brings it up, even though it’s kinda something we need to be able to discuss openly.”

“Okay, and what does that have to do with me being an alcoholic?”

“... Nothing.” Guilt and shame speared Lacy once again, and the hangover salted the wound. Shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have-

“Then why are you asking?” Gwen snapped, eyes wide with anger. 

Now that was something Lacy recognized. There it fucking is.  

They drove through a suburban neighborhood. Children played roller-hockey at the end of a cul de sac to their left, while mulberries and sycamores lined the roads. 

“Lacy,” Gwen said. 

Lacy sat on her hands and pressed her face against the window. 

“You don’t just get to ask that and then go silent when I call you on it!” Gwen snapped. 

Lacy heaved a pregnant sigh. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have said anything. Should’ve left it be. Shouldn’t have drunk so much last night, elsewise she might not have been dumb enough to ask. Too late now, though. “You haven’t been willing to tell me much about your parents, even though we’re going up against one of them. But I have told you about my parents.”

“What are you getting at?” Gwen asked. 

The neighborhood fell away behind them as they drove out into the open wilderness. 

Fine then. It wasn’t Lacy’s fault Gwen spiked up when interrogated on this topic. “They were both drunks,” Lacy said.

“And what exactly are you insinuating?” Gwen said. “That I might be like them?”

Yes. “I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

Lacy’s eyes narrowed. “Or you’re projecting. All I asked-”

“Was if I was a worthless drunk like them.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“I beg to differ. Are you sure you’re not projecting?”

No. “You still haven’t answered my original question.”

“Yes!” Gwen shouted. “Okay, there you fucking go! I was a sloppy fucking drunk and it almost killed me. I’m five years sober now, thank you very fucking much, and if you must know I was still a drunk when we first met.” Lacy looked out into the field, the lush farmland surging forth like an explosion of raw nature. “Lacy?” Gwen said. Lacy bit her tongue. She couldn’t say it. She shouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t. “Lacy, for fuck’s sake-”

“Is that why you didn’t take me with you?” Lacy hissed, the words falling out her mouth like gravity itself was tearing them away. 

They came to a stop in a small forest. Gwen got out of the RV, stomped into the dirt. 

“Gwen!” Lacy called after her, unbuckling her seatbelt and jumping out into the valley. 

Her teacher stopped and pivoted to face her. “For your information, yes. Does that make you happy? Does that satisfy you? Knowing that I didn’t take you with me because I was weak, because I was too busy crawling into the bottle? Does that make you feel better, that you had to suffer all those extra years because I was too drunk to take you with me?”

“Yes,” Lacy spat, and immediately rued it. “Wait, no-”

Gwen gave her a deranged smile, and then the middle finger. “No, you don’t get to take that back. But I wanna ask you Lacy, and really think about this- what gives you the right to judge anyone? Who are you to do that? What have you done? You could’ve avenged Drew on your own. You could have gone to avenge your parents on your own. But you didn’t. You chose to come to me for help. Why is that? Why would you go to someone who’d let you down before, who pretty clearly was going to let you down again by not being fucking good enough-”

“That’s not what I-”

“No, but it’s what you meant,” Gwen said, eyes welling up with tears. “Now tell me why? And this better be good.”

Lacy leaned against the back of the RV. “I….” Darkness wrapped around Lacy’s mind, a noose tightening. She stared directly ahead. 

“Lacy,” Drew said. “You know the answer.” 

“I’m scared to do anything on my own,” Lacy said. “I don’t trust myself. Not in the slightest. I’ve got this thing attached to me, this Destiny, that says what I’m supposed to, what I’m gonna do, and it’s just another fucking thing dictating my life to me, trying to make me into someone, something that I’m not, something that I hate, and I’m afraid that if I’m alone with it, if I’m alone at all for too long, I’ll slip up and give in and become a monster. I came to you because I needed a teacher, and you seemed like the best option. And maybe it’s Destiny- maybe our Stars wanted you to teach me. I don’t know what that means, but if I… If I’m gonna have any faith in myself, in my ability to do the right thing in these awful circumstances, then I need to trust it a little bit. I need to believe I can use this power for good. I need to believe that I can… That I can save the world, instead of destroying it. I need to believe in other people too.”

Gwen slumped down, sat in the dirt, brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Fffff is that all?”
Lacy’s posture uncoiled as she sat down and leaned against the side of the RV. She wiped her eyes dry. “Yeah. That’s all.”

“You’re afraid you’ll become a monster? Well get in line,” Gwen said with a gentle smirk. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was… Projecting a bit.”

“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” Lacy said. “That was… That was massively inappropriate. I shouldn’t have asked you that- I shouldn’t have insinuated-”

“I forgive you. And I should’ve been honest.”

Yeah that’d be a start, she thought. She buried the notion in the back of her mind. “Me too,” Lacy said. “I know it’s not rational, wanting justice for my parents when they were fucking horrible, it’s just… I can’t bear the thought of what happened to them. Or maybe I’m just afraid of it happening to me, so I wanna strike back before they can get me.”

“Given our present circumstances, that’s not exactly a radical stance.”

“Heh. Thanks.”

“Ffff okay here’s what you need to know about me,” Gwen said. 

“You don’t need to-”

“Yeah. I do,” Gwen said, raising a palm to cut her off. “My brother Arthur died fighting a ghoul when I was ten. The rest of my siblings… They were… Loyal to my dad’s vision. I wasn’t. It came to a head when I found out Dad was experimenting on my little brother Percival, trying to understand the true nature of Destiny Stars. I stopped him, and they all died in the fight. Morganna, Tristan, Elaine, Iseult, my mother… Even Percival. Baby of the family, caught in the crossfire. Everyone died, save for my father and I. After that I left. I spent a while hunting and wandering, drinking more and more every day to get myself through the pain. It became a problem pretty quickly. There was a brief spot when I first met Quentin where I was able to start cleaning myself up a bit, but then… Then I met you. My Star, back before I’d fully accepted it, led me to you and to Drew. I didn’t know for sure what it meant, but I knew it was important. I wasn’t ready. And you and Drew… When I saw you two, I just saw myself and Arthur all over again. So I turned tail and chugged every bottle I could get my hands on that night. After that things were a blur until I was living on the street, but then finally I got some damn help. Cleaned up. Patched it up with Quentin- by some miracle, he was willing to take me back. I don’t deserve him. And once again, I found myself led back to you, and the more I learn about you the more sense it makes.”

All of that… All of that… Hurt. Knowing that hurt. You knew, Lacy said. You knew who I was and you walked away regardless. But she had to know more. “It does?”

“You and me, we’re gonna save the world,” Gwen said with a deadened look in her eyes. 

Lacy balked. “What if that’s not what the Stars want?”

“Then fuck ‘em. They belong to us, not the other way around. It’s not like we’ve got no choice in what to do with our lives- if we didn’t, I’d still be in the gutter, and you’d still be hiding in your room.”

Lacy wanted to be mad. A part of her was. Gwen had walked away from her, despite knowing or at least suspecting she was supposed to be her teacher. She’d abandoned her… But she came back. When it really counted, when it was well and truly time, Gwen had come back for her and offered to teach her. 

Another part of her was mad at Gwen for not telling her any of this sooner, but at least she was being honest now. And besides, some things were just so personal the idea of telling anyone was an anathema. So tried her best to let it go, to move forward with her teacher at her side. In some ways this was no different than the fight she and Danny had had yesterday, or the skittishness Isabella sometimes demonstrated that Lacy had learned to work around. Everyone had things that made them shut down; the best thing to do was to accept that and try your best to help them through it, try not to take it personally.

And besides, as Gwen had pointed out, Lacy didn’t have that much of a right to judge. It would take a while to accept these secrets and these truths alike, but she would get there eventually. 

Lacy tapped her chest, letting her Star out to dance. She rose to her feet and cracked her knuckles. She offered Gwen a hand up, and she accepted it and rose to her feet.

“In that case, I’d say we have work to do,” Lacy said. 

Gwen nodded. 

Lacy told herself that it would be okay, buried the part of herself that knew it wouldn’t.