Some things break your heart..

The taxi drive over was awkward to say the least. No one spoke the whole way. Maeve’s gaze didn’t even sway from its hurt look out through the window, watching the world go by with. Her eyes were already quite red from the strains of not letting herself start crying in the car. She wouldn’t want to make the heavy air any heavier. It wasn’t the driver’s problem and from the way he discreetly had turned up the volume on the radio after she had failed in holding a sniffle to herself, had made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in taking it upon himself to make it his problem. Both the driver and the passenger just wanted to have the drive over with…
Honestly; Maeve just wanted the day over with.

And yet she knew that there were still some hours to go which she needed some distractions and some comfort to get through probably. So, around 20 minutes later she found herself standing outside in front of the penthouse door. Her chest felt immensely heavy and it was really a tough fight to calm the shaking in her breathings. She wouldn’t be able to hide it completely. Her nose was just as red and her cheeks had a glance from left-over dried tears. But she could still make an effort to be the strong woman she was. One who didn’t cry over a man. And especially not over a man which she herself had ended things with. A broken heart was reserved for the other one. Right?
She took a deep breath to collect herself, sniffled one last time and straightened her back. She quickly ran a hand though her hair, brushing the front pieces back and off her face before then rubbing under her nose to make sure she didn’t have snot running. She rang the doorbell. Immediately as she had done so, she looked down herself, making sure her clothe wasn’t a mess. Overall, she just didn’t want to portray the mess she was inside right now to the outside world. She blinked the stinging out of her eyes and got ready for the door to open.

Then the door opened and everything about her made-in-stone façade broke down. All it took was Zitora face to appear in front of her and it all came out like a boulder rolling down a steep hill. Maeve’s face didn’t hesitate to cringe in a hurt expression and she instantly choked on a cry. It was as if her tears had just been building up on the way there because suddenly, she couldn’t hold any of them back and her brown eyes watered, and the salty droplets glided down her cheeks with little to no resistance. She felt so bad for crying! This had not been the plan! But like the boulder, she just couldn’t stop now that she had started.
“I… I broke up with Graham. I didn’t know who else to go to,” she finally managed to stutter through her hulking while she franticly ran her hand to dry the tears and then just placing it slightly knuckled over her lips.

The hug was very much appreciated, even thought Maeve didn’t have the bodily control to also wrap her arms around her friend and fall into it like she felt like doing at that moment. Neither were there time for that. Instead she shallowed the constantly returning choking feeling in her throat and sniffled hard as she stepped inside the gorgeous penthouse apartment, nodding in approval to the wine mentioned. Wine sounded really good right now.
Maeve’s crying had partly stopped thanks to having gotten what she had bottled up inside out, however, she knew it would return at some point. It was just waiting for another weak spot to be exposed. She slowly took of her big scarf as well as her coat, revealing the dark-green velour buttoned dress underneath. She dried her cheek with the back of her hand before looking around for the coat-hanger, hanging her outerwear just as Zitora came back from the kitchen.

Now where to even start? “We were on a date. And everything went well. I mean, we had a nice dinner at that amazing..” Her voice were already faintly cracking again. “..Ethiopian restaurant in mid-town. You know I’ve been noticing some strain between him and me but we were talking and having a great time like we used to back in the beginning. It felt really good.” But clearly from the way she had started to wrap her arms around herself in a comforting self-embrace and how she kept wetting and pressing her lips together as if she was fighting a shivering jaw, the evening hadn’t ended as well as it had been then. And whatever had happened had hurt her. Immensely. Maeve sniffled again and finally dared move over to sit down on the couch. Although she still had her arms softly around herself. “Then afterwards we were just walking, talking. For some reason he begun mentioning how I should just move in with him. To get out of my parents’ house, away from my loud brothers and I started feeling really tight around my chest.” The tears came back before the sobbing and she quickly tried blinking them away and rubbed her cheeks from those tears that had fled down her face.
“Like, I wasn’t happy to hear that he wanted to live with me. I felt more offended by how… how he made it sound like my family was annoying. And that he was sure I must feel the same way.” A bit of anger suddenly sneaked its way into her tone by the last few sentences since thinking back brought the feelings from that moment back. But then it calmed again. “I must have confronted him with it… and then…” The cry was really pushing its way up and she could sense the struggle to get the words out. She turned her head slightly to look towards her friend and even managed to bring a half-assed smiled forward. A smile that could convince nobody. “He told me he didn’t like kids. And how he probably would never want any of his own. And… then I broke it off with him. Just like that.” The smile crumbled instantly and left a clear way for another break down as she couldn’t hold it back any longer.

It turned out, that coming to Zitora right after the incident was one of the best decisions, she could have made that evening. It was still laying very heavily on her, she suspected it would do so for a least a couple of days, if not weeks, but she felt immediately better after having told her friend the story as well as hearing her reassuring words. Zitora always had her back. Even when she needed to hear the thing she might not want to hear in certain moments. Luckily, right now, there were no such things and Maeve’s hulking and sobbing sounds slowly got choked and silenced again all the way down to a few sniffles. Zitora’s obvious annoyance had almost made her laugh at little. For the four years the human had known and gotten closer to this woman, she had always spoken her mind with very little filter.
But Maeve couldn’t quite shack the feeling of guilt which seemed to tear at her the most. So with a glass of wine poured for her, she leaned forward to grab I, only to lean back down into the soft back-support of the couch and took her first sip. A large sip. One, people might say was more of a gulp. The taste of wine removed the ugly taste of tears and accumulated salvia like nothing else did. “Yea, but… I can’t help but feel terrible about how easy it suddenly was for me to break it off. Two years! Shouldn’t it have been harder?” she had to ask, holding the glass with both her hands like a warm mug of tea. She was in no state were she wanted to bother with proper etiquette. She hadn’t even actually noticed if she liked the wine or not, which in itself was a crime. “I loved him. And I still do. At least I think so. It just feels like our relationship became a business partnership in an instant.” Words just kind of fell out of her mouth with no solid structure. She did that when she was overthinking things. A bad habit, really.

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“Wha-.. Who said that?!” Graham stopped incautiously, looking through the surroundings around him with his head whipping. But there… was no one else but him within proper ear shot. Only a man with a dog a little further down the pathway. That was weird. He had been sure someone had called him an asshat. It gave him the chills and he pulled his coat tighter around him in a slightly aggressive manner. He was already not in a great mood. Everything that night had gone wrong. He needed a drink...
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Maeve took another swig of her wine and she had already about halved the amount she had been poured. She’d have to get Zitora a fresh bottle some other day. However, this time she shallowed the gulp a little slower and gently turned her head to look at her friend, pure, unfiltered appreciating in her chocolate brown – red and puffy – eyes. “Thanks for letting me stay for a bit. I didn’t want to be alone. Or go home. I needed a girl friend’s company. And some wine.” She chuckled half-heartedly and reached her glass towards her friend, inviting a cheer.

Zitora was right, a part of her knew that very well. But it probably didn’t stick to her like it should. Maeve wasn’t entirely there because of the overwhelming experience and the crying had made her head dizzy. A not so great mix with alcohol but honestly - when had it stopped anyone. Some stuff were just easier to deal with when on a bit of a distance from it. And as she had told her friend; She wasn’t exactly heartbroken over the outcome although she had cried as if her own prince had left her on that street corner. Was she even allowed to be crying like this? She felt the saliva thickening in her mouth, making wine, as she took another big gulp to hopefully thin out her spit, taste strangely slimy. “You’re totally right, Zee. It’s time to move on. Graham wasn’t perfect either anyway. He…” She suddenly frowned, her eyes looking straight forward without focusing on anything in particular. “He didn’t even call to see if I was alright after the crash! He was too busy playing cards with some friends that night.”
The talk had slowly but surely pulled her further and further towards frustration now that something had neutralized her sadness. That sadness sitting there and talking about it. Not being alone but being together with someone she knew understood. “And I was honestly starting to get really tired over how he acted towards Ethan. I had to constantly reassure him. I mean, I’m I such a untrustworthy woman that he wouldn’t handle me being around other guys?” she blurted out, turning to look back at her with a look of ’unbelievable!’ They both knew Ethan very well. They both knew just how little of a threat someone like him was. At least that was what Maeve thought. She had known the man long enough and seen him in enough relationships that she was walking the edge of not seeing him as a ‘man’. She hadn’t understood Graham’s growing jealousy.
Breathing in deeply she then calmed herself by breathing out slowly and controlled while closing her eyes. She was surprised just how much of that she had been filling her up. She should’ve opened up about it sooner. She had talked with people about her frustrations, she wasn’t a saint in that regard, but still she felt a much bigger relief this time around.

Maeve sniffled and leaned forward to place her glass back on the coffee table before standing up from the couch. First thing first, she took her shoes off, getting down to her original height. “There’s surely someone else out there for me. Graham was a trial period that had run out and wanted me to pay for further subscription,” she commented with a trying laugh at the end. Of course, it was a joke. She wasn’t really that harsh. But damn, if it didn’t feel good. Any woman was allowed a certain amount of bitchy behavior. Especially when running on wine.
Straight on tight-covered feet she started tip-toeing over the floor into the kitchen area, already knowing it as her own. In the kitchen she took a piece of paper towel which she wetted to wash of the stiff feeling of dried up tears on her cheeks. As well as  maybe remove some mascara from around her eyes so she wouldn’t look as messy. Her nose was still red and her eyes glossy but it was something. And it made her feel better as she returned to the living room. “Do you still love Marcel?”

Maeve immediately burst out laughing. A heartwarming laugh one probably wouldn’t be expecting coming from a newly heartbroken young woman as Maeve. She still have tears hidden away in the corners of her eyes and yet had Zitora’s follow-up comment really hit the right spot. Of course, the amount of alcohol in her system had something to do with it, but really, it was only a very small part of it. She was used to drinking, not as much as her friend, which they had come to find out back in the days where they had first met and come to known each other. Although she hadn’t had enough to have her sent into the giggle stage. “Then I did the right thing since there’s no way in Hell that I’d share Bear. Hopefully Graham can find his own somewhere, even though I doubt it.” Her laughter silenced but hanged on in the air around her as her facial expression just softened rather than erasing the burst of  spontaneous and contagious delight. Ethan was one of a kind. Just like Zitora was. She would think the same about her loving cousin but Maeve had met her mother… And mother like daughter, definitely stood true there.

Taking Graham down like this did help her to feel better. However, she was well aware that it was only a temporary solution. It would hurt for some time, she knew that. But she didn’t really mind it if it didn’t hurt too much that night. Everyone had experienced the sting of a fresh and open wound getting oxygenated. This kind of help it make scabs before she needed to deal too much with the hurt. Not very mature for an almost twenty seven year-old induvial…
With their conversation now also involving Marcel, Zitora’s lost love - thanks to Maeve herself - Maeve tightened up in her jaw. It wasn’t as horrible a thing to mention now that it had been back then, even she didn’t actually feel like walking on egg shells. But it was still sad! She tilted her head as she looked admiring at her friend. “If a relationship start feeling like a battle field more than a valley like your and Marcel’s did, I can understand why you did what you did. It’s just… You deserve so much better.” Calmly she stepped over the well-kept floor - the apartment was quite prestige. Far from what she had to come home to. And still there was a clear lack of actual life here. She wouldn’t want to live in a place like this. Not when she had experienced the invading family life. Arriving back at the couch, she took it upon herself to grab the wine bottle and pour Zitora another one, as she had already finished her first one. Maeve wasn’t any better, almost being done with herself as well and she did also pour herself back up to the start line.

“Yea. Our parent often just make it look so easy, don’t they? My parent got together in high school and they are still together. Probably more happy now than they’ve ever been. That’s what I want. I’ve always imaged it should be like how I see them around each other.” She sat the bottle back down and reached over the table to get her glass in her hands, though she stay standing there on the opposite side of the coffee table. “Oh my god, oes that mean that I’ve unintentionally put high requirement on my boyfriends?” she asked.

Worth being inspired by. Maeve like the sound of that and it didn’t fail to make her smile. What Maeve dreamed off wasn’t the high school sweat heart story but rather having the sense of close family filled with unconditional love which she felt every time she came home to that cramped terraced house. She couldn’t image herself ever actually dating anyone back in high school. She had had to much stuff to do, even if she had let her feelings fly and manifest on some guy, she wouldn’t have had the time between school work, part-time work at the diner and giving a hand with the growing children. Having such young brothers had also something to do with why she hadn’t pursuit many back in the day. Rumours weren’t always fun as a teenager. “I still think I might be pushing my parents image a bit too much unto myself,” she admitted with a light chuckle and shake on the head. If only Zitora knew just how much she actually had walked in her parent’s food steps…

There was no way for Maeve to hide the surprise in her face, then moment she got asked about the whole supernatural thing. Not because she wasn’t very much aware that her friend also was a part of it and had kept it a secret much like her best friend had. Those two were the ones she would blame the most, since Cecilia – bless her soul – was basically as new to it as Maeve was herself. Only a few months apart. It was forgivable. But Maeve just hadn’t expected it to come up. Not tonight. She had purposely left it out of the way.
She lowered her brown eyes away from the beautiful woman in the couch and smiled non-convincing. “Ah, I see you’ve been kept up to speed. It was Ethan, wasn’t it? He was saying he’d want you on the case with Cecilia and… all that,” she solemnly said and couldn’t help but think back. But it was fine. She was fine. Not everything was fine, but everything was at least manageable now. There hadn’t been any incidents since that night. “You really don’t waste any time. I’m finding it quite… extravagant. It’s like the world I knew turned out to be only a fifth of what actually is so I’ve had some major headaches when trying to make it all make sense.” Maeve carefully got down to sit on the floor, succeeding perfectly in not to spill her wine. “The supernatural is scary, though. I-..” She stopped herself. I just need you do promise me.. She sealed her jaw and bit her lower lip as her thoughts found their way to that night. Her first actual encounter with not just a werewolf but the other half of that conflict. The wound from that night had healed and disappeared, not even leaving a scar or mark. “Meeting with the supernatural might even have been a reason why I eventually ended up coming to the conclusion I did with Graham.”
In an attempt to hide the sweetened smile that sneaked up on her, she put the glass to her lips and gulped a sip. “The evening at Ethan’s place, I remember Graham calling many times and I just thought to myself then, that he was the last person I wanted to talk to at that moment.” While that was surely a part of her decision making it wasn’t the only part. She just couldn’t get herself to open up about those… She had promised to keep silent. For now.

Maeve chuckled lightly by the thought of the group of people, she had been surrounded by that night being ‘family’. In a sense they were, actually. Cecilia being blood. And Ethan being… whatever Ethan in all seriousness was to her. He wasn’t really like a brother to her, although she undoubtedly had used that degrading excuse of a description back in her younger teenager years. He was just… Ethan. And Ethan was just always around. Even before she had meet and bonded with the tough nail of a woman sitting next to her. She had probably even gotten close to him before she really clicked with her cousins. Still it felt slightly weird referring to him as family. But Zitora was right when things weren’t looked deeper into. It had just momentarily mused her. “He should, yea! But at the same time… I had told Graham I’d be hanging out at Ethan’s house. With Cece. I thought I had made it very clear to him so he wouldn’t end up having to call and check up on me every five minutes.” As she spoke the softness in her voice gradually slid further and further into the irritation once again. The frustration that that bloody man could just bring out in her in no time. The tiny human clearly had a lot on her chest and it wasn’t mainly caused by the supernatural circumstances. No. Those she had a might harder time talking about. But Graham Holland? Now that the sadness had settled there was only excuses and provocation.
So, by the end of her words, she needed to take a deep breath to calm herself back down. She was a rollercoaster and she almost felt bad for her friend, that she had to deal with her that night. “No. I don’t think you’re just making up excuses. What you and Marcel had couldn’t have just crackled all on its own. Not from what I saw. I’m sure you had your arguments but… You were like two peas in a pod,” she said just as she herself did Zitora’s act back and gulped down a large amount of the wine, building upon the buzzing feeling which the alcohol was really starting to leave in her.

Brown eyes lowered down to her knee, looking down at the hand, her friend at left there. And then the brown eyes simply looked up at the hand’s owner where she managed a genuine smile. Well. A genuine ‘strained’ smile. One that pushed the corners of her mouth into her plump cheeks rather than pushing her cheeks up to her eyes. “I know. You’re a really great friend, you know that, Zitora? Ethan said you wanted to tell me all this time. No secrets. No bullshit. That’s you. I can always count on your to just rip off the band aid. Don’t ever change no matter what people say that you should. You’re…” As if she had either forgotten the word, she had wanted to say or just in that exact time had realized just how right she was in the statement, her browns pushed themselves towards each other and her face pulled a matching expression. “You’re amazing. You’re really amazing.”

…she was drunk. Or at the very least quite tipsy. She had been drinking a bit before hand - something unavoidable for a wine connoisseur like Maeve when out on a dinner date - and then now she hadn’t really been slowing down.to see an answer in her face before a verbal one.

”No. No! You don’t understand,” Maeve blurted out, nearly interrupting her friend before she could get a chance to finish talking. “You’re so amazing. And I’m just this horrible person. That night, that night where it all went down, where Cecilia got attacked, where she got cursed, you know what I did? I only thought of myself and how I felt left out. All I seemingly cared about was to know what everyone else in the room apparently knew. I didn’t think of how Cecilia might feel. Or Ethan. And Cecilia almost stabbed a man that night!” She truly felt horrible, now that she let it all out and she just realized how she hadn’t actually been drinking ever since that night, which was probably for the better, if this was what people around her would have to endure when she eventually would get tipsy enough to oil up her tongue. “And what’s even worse is how much of a coward I am as well! You know what’s scares me the most about this whole new world? It’s asking. I’m so scared of asking questions and hearing answers that I don’t want to hear because… I… I wouldn’t know what to do. How to react. And I’m supposed to be all mature. But I’m just not!” She hadn’t even looked towards Zitora. This whole time her eyes had been unfocusedly looking more or less straight forwards out into the room or down into her glass of wine. And thank god, she couldn’t actually see her own reflection in it or she havocking feelings might just have amplified.
In a little moment of silence - although a silence which was hinting of yet another flood of words coming right up - she carefully spread her legs as to sit in a flexible tailor’s position where her legs weren’t really crossed but just laid to the ground beside each other. “I’ve noticed just how grim violence and murder and death is an ordinary part of the supernatural world. And how it’s just… normal that someone would cut off your head or...” She choked, not being able to bring her to elaborate further on more gruesome or grotesques normalities. “But when all that is sort of removed all this new stuff if exciting and makes me want to know even more. It makes it do much easier to deal with. However it also makes me a coward.”
She scuffed a pathetic laugh, which only ironed in more how rose-tinted she insisted to view everything. “I’m even scared to ask either or not you might actually have died back then. Because… with what I know now, it almost makes more sense than anything else. That who I saw in the casket was you and not someone expertly redone to look exactly like you but you somehow got brought back to life. Hell! Ethan’s dad is an archangel, so higher power do exist!..”

It was with her cheeks and jaw tense, that she finally turned her head and looked at the lawyerness. She could feel her heart all the way up in her throat, nervous about what imagine this had left in her friend’s eyes. Surely admitting that she was a coward or selfish wouldn’t make any of it good and forgiving personality traits. At least she wasn’t crying. Something that surprised herself a little bit, considering just how easy to tears she was at that moment and the bottled up feelings she had just cracked open. She hadn’t even told Ethan about any of it. Nor Cecilia. She had kept it to herself, even though she was sure it hadn’t been very well hidden, how she constantly would avoid that kind of stuff. Just… now at least Zitora knew her reasoning why.
Meave then took a very deep breath, like one that lasted even beyond the amount of air she would physically breath in as if expanding her chest manually would fill them then with more air and not just make the room more spacious. The exhale that followed was close to soundless and unnoticeable. “I’d like that. It’s my day off anyway tomorrow,” she agreed to the suggestion, not having plans of leaving the luxurious apartment for the next 24 hours to begin with.

Maeve had expected herself to turn pale when her speculations got confirmed but… “I knew it.” Apologetic eyes turned to look deeply and emotionally at Zitora. The shame which she had expressed verbally was now so apparent in her face that one would have to be a superb actress - or probably even better than that - so mimic the same genuine feelings. Zitora probably never even had to have that mind connection with Maeve to know just how she felt at every moment anyway. Maeve had never been good at hiding that sort of thing anyway, although she actually thought she was somewhat at it. “There was just always something that didn’t make any sense.” And in one way or another, this seemed much more fitting. This. Zitora actually having died and come back, made more sense than the rather believable story that she had been told instead. Of her kidnapping and of the faking of her death so people would stop looking for her. Now that explanation sounded like something taken from the plot of B-grade thriller movies. Maeve had never quite understood just why someone would go as far as so all that to someone like her friend. She was a lawyer, yes. She had made enemies in court, yes. But that kind of act had always gone hand in hand with something much more personal than what that kind of enemies could muster up. Unless… She felt her heart sink slightly as she kept looking at the gorgeous leading woman - the Fred of the group, she thought again. Unless Maeve just plainly didn’t know her that much either. She quickly shook the thought away.

For some reason, the little attempt to brighten the situation didn’t do all that much, because Maeve only just managed to bring a smile forth for a second or so before it disappeared again as if the smile really only had been there as a short recognition of Zitora’s bid. An appreciation, since she had just been talking about how that was the exact method she had been using to deal with everything. “Can you tell me about it? What happened? I… I’d really like to know,” she said, even leaving herself surprised of just how calm she talked. She carefully moved her body to turn more sideways to better have her front towards Zitora. The tailor’s position first got switch to her sitting up on her calves before she slid down to sit more or less next to her legs.
“I doubt I’ll never be able to relate much but I’d want to try and be there for you. Even if it’s a bit too late. You guys have always been there for me. Listening to my mundane problems, which must have sounded like the smallest of things compared.” She was mostly talking about Zitora and Ethan, although the remaining member of the tight group of friends had just about the same amount of intense problems now. Perhaps that was just it: Maeve could no longer relate to her friends. She had not died before. She had not been cursed. She had been attacked but it had left her with only very small scars. It was nothing compared to how many times she was sure Ethan had been jumped by nightly bloodsuckers.
She moved an arm up on the couch beside her and lifted it so she could rest her head on the knuckles of her hand. Her hand with the wine glass still rested in her lap. “Did you go to Heaven? Is there even such a thing? I mean, angels exist so it must, right? Then that’d mean that the Christians are the ones who were right all along.”

Maeve’s heart dropped the exact moment it got revealed that her friend hadn’t simply died and come back but in fact had been killed. Intentionally, it sounded like, as she went further into the tragic narrative. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible! And she had kept it all in all this time? The thing was, now that Maeve had found the courage to ask and the courage to want to hear about it, it wasn’t as scary as she had feared. Actually, it wasn’t scary at all to hear about it, instead it felt freeing, in some messed up way. The thing she was told were all scary and terrible, no doubt about that, but the brunette human didn’t feel the strong pull of wanting to get away and make distance to it as she had thought. Or even felt before even asking.
She listened mostly in complete silence, not taking her eyes from Zitora. It broke her heart to see her start crying and listen to the irregular vibrations in her voice, which usually consistently was so strong and stern. From time to time, she had curled her lips in and had to shallow some of the slimy salvia that accumulated in her mouth, but she made sure to do so with very little to no sound, not wanting to break the flow her friend had gotten into, knowing just how hard it must be to relieve just to talk about it. It had been the same with Maeve and there had the amount of liquid courage in her body helped a lot. Speaking of the percentage in her blood, she sensed the buzz dull.

It would be an understatement to say it was a lot to take in. Especially as she got to the part of Heaven. And her father, making it even more clear just how special she was. Maeve had known that for years already. There were the theory that everyone was descendants of Adam and Eve but this… this was much, much more different! Had she also met God? A pained, yet empathetic expression smoothed over Maeve’s face the moment Zitora finally looked towards her. And then she paled again, her brows knitting a few delicate wrinkles in her forehead.

Carefully, again without wanting to make much sound, Maeve placed her glass on the coffee table and even began to push it a bit away from them to make more room to scoot closer to Zitora and move slightly in front of her curled up figure. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She felt it necessary to say as the first thing, her voice low and mellow as she made and effort to pull the sleeve of her dress down over her hand before getting her hand into the body-cave Zitora had made for herself to hopefully get her a crooked finger under her chin and gently pull her face up. That way she could try and dry her wet tears away. Velour probably wasn’t the most comfortable material to be rubbing against the skin but it was better than the rougher material of the throw pillows. “I’m so sorry. And here I was talking to highly about you and Marcel, when.. When he did something like that to you!” Even if it wasn’t all Marcel, she still felt sick to her stomach to have been rooting for him. He had still been part of the fake death. And do to association he had gotten Zitora killed! So had her own sister! It was not alright! It was no wonder how closed off Zitora had become. Constantly having her walls up. Just how protective Maeve had experienced the woman. It explained a lot. Time in Heaven had sounded peaceful and healing but it had crumbled so closely afterwards again.
“Your sister, is she still alive and out there somewhere?” she asked, not sure if she did to hear whether or not she was still a threat or in an attempt to not let Zitora sit with it all by herself.

Afterwards, however, Maeve look away from her friend and scanned the living room. Looking towards the wall. Looking towards the stairs. Even the perfectly fine windows before then getting up. She had been in the kitchen not so long ago for the same thing, she returned there for. A moist cloth. She knew how sticky and irritating tried up tears were. The mother in her had nearly sat down by Zitora and started washing her face for her, but she settles with holding the cloth out for her to take herself. “We need you out of this place. And I don’t mean out right now. No. I mean completely. You need to move, Zitora. You can’t possibly tell me that you want to stay at a place like this,” Maeve started to lay out in front of the Nephilim. “Tomorrow. We’ll start looking for a new place for you tomorrow. That’s what I want to do. I want to help you. It won’t make you weak and it’s not running away. And it’s not forgetting. It’s moving on.” The apartment was nice. Really nice. And there were good memories there as well. But those could be made again anywhere else.