What Remains Between Us

Posted on Sun Aug 23rd, 2026 @ 8:06pm by Kennedy Kelly & Maeve MacKenna

5,681 words; about a 28 minute read

Mission: Episode 8: Shadows Over Avalon
Location: Avalon
Timeline: March 27, 1992 - Morning

With the morning meal finished and the X-Men divided up into two different exploration teams, all that was left was to repack their supplies and belongings for the next phase in their mission of discovering where the missing children had gone. People scattered and began to clean and organize, and as usual, Kennedy gravitated toward the dishes. Her survival skills left much to be desired, but washing cookware was one job she could confidently manage.

Removing the long sleeves and jacket of her uniform, she crouched down by the running creek and washed the simple coffee pot and utensils that had been used. While she worked, she noticed Maeve not far from her upstream filling her canteen with cool water.

“Hey,” Kennedy said in a simple greeting, the pair standing so close to one another would have been awkward without it. “I want to say that I’m sorry that I called you a nutjob, I get a little heated sometimes and my mouth gets the better of me.”

Maeve glanced over from the creek, the canteen held beneath the clear rush of water. Surprise showed briefly on her face. Kennedy apologising was not something she had expected to hear that morning.

She drew the canteen free, screwed the cap back on and rested it against her knee.

“Thank you,” Maeve said. “For sayin’ it.”

Her gaze dropped to the water moving over the stones between them.

“I shouldn’t have cracked the floor either. I was angry, and I let it get away from me.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the canteen. “That happens sometimes. More than I’d like.”

She looked back at Kennedy then, without defensiveness.

“So... apology accepted. And I’m sorry for my part in it.”

The creek filled the small pause that followed. Around them, the camp carried on with the scrape of packs being closed and voices calling across the clearing.

“We've been through so much, and things can get dangerous, or worse, deadly. If something isn't right with one of us... well, it can make everything a lot harder. I guess I got mad because we're all in this together. We need to know each other.” Kennedy shrugged as she rinsed out the coffee pot. “It doesn't justify me being rude, but I felt like I should explain why. Thank you for understanding.”

Maeve shifted a little nearer, easier now that the sharpness had gone from the moment.

“How are things with Skjoldr?” she asked. “You two seem... good.”

There was no teasing in it, only quiet curiosity and the warmth of someone making an effort to meet her halfway.

Maeve’s mouth softened into a small smile.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I was just askin’.”

“I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say something.” Kennedy replied with a quiet chuckle before her expression softened into something almost bashful. It was a different side of her than Maeve had seen before. “I guess it's kind of obvious with all of us together.” The blonde absently fussed with the dirty forks in her hands, buying herself a moment to gather the courage to continue. Kennedy had always been coquettish and shy when it came to matters of the heart, especially when the feelings were still so new.

“I like him a lot. He's quiet and thoughtful, measured in the way he speaks, but there's such a genuine kindness to him. A kind of honor that doesn't really seem to exist much anymore. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed how impossibly gorgeous he is, but it's his curiosity and eagerness to learn that really captivates me. Then there are those moments when he looks at me, or reaches for me, and I feel like he could somehow mend that wounded part of me... and that scares me in a way these woods never could.”

Kennedy was a romantic dreamer, someone who had always believed in fairy tales and happily ever afters, the kind she'd devoured in the countless books she'd read. When she spoke of Skjoldr, there was an unmistakable poetry to her words. “But it's all so new and uncharted. I'm terrified I'll mess it up... or that one day he'll see something in me he can't stand.”

Maeve listened without interrupting.

The creek slid around Kennedy’s hands and carried the last of the coffee grounds downstream, but Maeve barely noticed it. There was something almost startling in seeing Kennedy like this, all the usual polish gone soft at the edges while she worried at the forks and tried to explain a feeling too new to trust.

When she spoke of the way Skjoldr looked at her, Maeve’s thoughts went somewhere else entirely.

Desmond beside her in the clearing, sunlight caught in his amber eyes. Desmond reaching for her as though touch had never been something she might flinch from. The quiet certainty of being wanted without having to earn it first.

Maeve lowered her gaze to the canteen in her hands.

“I know that bit,” she said softly. “The part where someone looks at you and... everything in you goes quiet for a second.”

Her thumb traced the rim of the metal cap.

“Desmond used to do that. Made me feel like maybe I wasn’t as difficult to love as I’d decided I was.” She paused, swallowing against the tightness that came with his name. “Now he’s gone, and I don’t really know what to do with any of it. Feels like he took the part of me that knew where I belonged with him.”

The admission left her quieter than she intended. Maeve watched the water slip over pale stones until she trusted her voice again.

“So I understand why it frightens you,” she said. “Letting someone matter that much gives them an awful lot they could hurt without ever meanin’ to.”

She looked back at Kennedy, warmer now.

“But from what little I’ve seen, Skjoldr doesn’t look at you like he’s searchin’ for somethin’ wrong. He looks at you like he’s already found somethin’ worth keepin’.”

Maeve shifted the canteen beneath one arm and gave a small, almost sheepish smile.

“I’ve hardly spoken to him, mind. He’s very tall, very handsome, and seems decent enough not to know it too loudly. That’s about the full report.”

Her smile grew a fraction.

“Varo I’ve made a much firmer judgement on. He’s magnificent. Though I’m still waitin’ for the proper moment to ask if he lets people ride on his back.”

The joke passed gently, without pulling the moment away from Kennedy.

Maeve crouched closer to the creek and dipped her fingers into the cold water, rinsing away a smear of mud from the canteen.

“You might mess it up,” she said after a moment. “He might too. People do. Doesn’t mean it’s doomed.”

She looked towards Kennedy again.

“And if there’s something in you he can’t stand someday, let him decide that for himself. Don’t decide it for him before he’s even had the chance to know you properly.”

Kennedy nodded in quiet agreement, though the worry lingering in the back of her mind refused to fade. Perhaps it was because she wanted what was growing between her and Skjoldr so desperately that the thought of losing it was unbearable.

"That sense of loss..." Kennedy said as she finally stopped fussing with the utensils. "It does get better with time. I felt it with Jace and with Kurt."

A wistful smile tugged at the corner of her lips as Kennedy remembered some of the happier moments. "It's like losing a limb. You keep reaching for something that's no longer there, and for a while you don't know how to move without it. At first it's an open wound, raw enough that everything reminds you of what you've lost. Then it slowly scabs over, until one day all that's left is a scar."

"It never really disappears, you just stop noticing it every day. Eventually, you even forget how much it hurt..." Kennedy glanced towards the camp where Skjoldr was, warmth returning to her eyes despite the melancholy in her voice. "...and then you're foolish enough to fall in love all over again."

Maeve looked down at the canteen between her hands, turning it slowly while Kennedy spoke.

The way she described it made sense. Too much sense, really. Maeve still caught herself thinking of things she wanted to tell Desmond before remembering there was nowhere to take them. Some days she nearly turned towards the door expecting him to be there, all amber eyes and that quiet way he had of making the room feel less crowded.

“Aye,” she said after a moment. “Suppose I’m still at the bit where everythin’ keeps catchin’ on it.”

Her thumb pressed into a shallow dent in the metal.

“Don’t much like the thought of forgettin’ how it hurt, though.” Maeve gave a small, uneasy shrug. “Feels a bit too close to forgettin’ him, even if I know that’s not what you mean.”

She followed Kennedy’s glance towards the camp. Skjoldr was easy enough to find among the others, even without the enormous white bear nearby.

“And you’ve done this before,” Maeve said. “Lost people. Thought it was the end of the world. Then went and liked someone again anyway.”

A faint smile touched her mouth.

“That’s either very brave or very stupid.”

Maeve nudged Kennedy lightly with her shoulder.

“Probably both.”

"Definitely both," Kennedy said with a soft chuckle, slowly shaking her head in shared disbelief. "I guess it's because, when it's good it can be the best thing that ever happens to you."

Still crouched beside the water, she looked over at Maeve. The easy smile faded into something gentler, touched with quiet understanding. "Hey... if you ever want someone to talk to about all of this, you can talk to me. I'm not some sagacious fountain of wisdom like the Professor was, but I've taken a few of those hits myself."

Kennedy’s gaze lingered on the rippling water before returning to Maeve. "Sometimes it just helps knowing someone else has been there. That you're not the only person who's felt lost, or hurt, or wondered if things were ever going to get better. You don't have to carry all of that by yourself, okay?"

Maeve did not answer straight away.

Kennedy’s offer should have been easy enough to accept. Say thank you, make some joke about Kennedy being a terrible substitute for Professor Xavier, then get on with packing before anyone noticed they had spent half the morning talking about feelings beside a creek.

Instead, Maeve stared at the water.

“I’ve been runnin’ a long time.”

The words came quietly.

“Since Achill, really. Ran from home. Ran from the places they put me in after. Ran from people who said they were helpin’ me.” Her thumb worried at the dented edge of the canteen. “Then I got here and everyone kept tellin’ me I was safe, and I think part of me’s still waitin’ for somebody to change their mind.”

She breathed out through her nose, but it caught slightly on the way.

“There was a man called Artur.”

Maeve’s fingers stopped moving.

“He said he could get me to America. Said things would be different here. That I could start again.”

Her mouth tightened.

“He lied.”

That single word came harder than the rest.

Maeve looked down sharply, blinking several times as though something in the creek had caught her eye. It had not. When she spoke again, her voice was thinner.

“There were men. They weren’t...”

She stopped.

Her jaw worked as she tried again.

“They weren’t bringin’ me here to help me.”

A tremor passed through the loose stones beneath the water beside her. Barely enough to disturb the creek, but Maeve felt it and immediately curled her fingers tighter around the canteen.

“I knew what they wanted.”

Her eyes stayed fixed on the current.

“I tried to get away. They tried to stop me, and I was scared and I was so bloody angry and...”

Her voice broke.

Maeve pressed her lips together hard, furious at it. She sniffed once and wiped quickly beneath one eye with the heel of her hand, catching the tear before it could reach her cheek.

“Fuck.”

She gave a little shake of her head, embarrassed now as well as upset, but when she looked towards Kennedy there was something almost defiant in it. As though daring herself more than anyone else to finish what she had started.

“I killed them.”

The words were barely louder than the water.

Maeve looked away again immediately.

“I used me powers and I killed them.”

Another tear escaped. She scrubbed this one away harder than necessary.

“I’ve never told anyone that.”

Her breathing had gone uneven despite every effort to keep it under control. She drew her knees a little closer and stared at the canteen clasped between both hands.

“I tell meself I was scared, and I was. I was terrified.” Her voice caught again. “But I was angry too. Proper angry. And sometimes I don’t know which bit of it did it.”

Maeve swallowed.

“Afterwards I just ran. Again.”

The creek filled the silence she left behind. Maeve sniffed once more, quieter this time, and rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand.

“So when you say I don’t have to carry everythin’ on me own...” She managed a small, miserable shrug. “I don’t know how else to do it, Kennedy.”

“I’ve killed people too…” Kennedy admitted, her voice small and heavy with shame. “When I first found out about my powers, I didn’t really know how to control them. The school was attacked right after I arrived, by a huge, hulking guy called the Juggernaut, along with a bunch of A.I.M. goons who came with lethal intent. One of them chased me through the hedge maze. It was new to me, and I got lost, so when I doubled back, I ran right into him.”

She swallowed, her eyes dropping toward the ground. “I was terrified. When I touched him, I charged him with energy and…” Kennedy hesitated, the memory still carrying a weight she struggled to put into words. “Boom.”

Kennedy looked down after she said it, almost embarrassed to admit what had happened despite the fact that she had been defending herself. “I puked my guts out afterward. For a while, whenever I intentionally tried to use my powers, I’d feel like I was going to vomit. But I talked to the Professor about it afterward, and our conversations helped.”
She fell silent for a moment, watching the stream slip and glide over the smooth rocks, its current carrying the water away from them with effortless grace.

“But the scariest part for me was discovering how accurate I am with a bow.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the spoon she was holding. “I’m not just a good shot because I practice, it’s the second part of my mutation, it makes it almost impossible for me to miss. When I stop thinking and let instinct take over, my shots are lethal.”

Kennedy shook her head, her expression darkening.
“It took a lot of training, and it still takes a lot of focus to make sure I don’t hit something vital. I have to consciously think about where I’m aiming, how much force I’m using, where the arrow is going to land.” She paused, her voice dropping even lower. “What does that say about me? When I let go and instinct takes over… my natural state is to be a killer.”

For a moment, only the gentle sound of running water filled the silence.

“I try to justify it too,” Kennedy continued. “I tell myself it was inexperience. That I was handed these insane powers before I was ready for them. And, for the most part, I believe that’s true. There’s an entire school devoted to teaching people like us how to live with what we are. I’ve seen mutants face the same kinds of choices and turn out completely differently, look at the Brotherhood.”

Kennedy paused, searching for the right words, as though the conclusion had been forming inside her for a long time but she had never quite known how to say it aloud. “Every day is a new day filled with new choices. I can regret the choices I made in the past, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost control of my future.” She drew in a slow breath. “I’m choosing to face myself. I’m choosing to do what I believe is right.”

“I still scare myself,” Kennedy admitted. “And a lot of the time, I still hate myself, too. But when those feelings get loud, I try to remember that I still have a choice. I can make choices that help me become someone I can live with. Someone I’m proud of, Someone who gets to decide who she is instead of letting the worst thing she’s ever done decide it for her. I try to become someone who is worthy of love.”

Maeve listened to Kennedy in much the same way Kennedy had listened to her. She did not interrupt, did not try to soften the ugly parts before they were finished. Somewhere during the story of the hedge maze, the bow and the fear of what happened when instinct took over, Maeve stopped rubbing at the dampness beneath her eyes.

She had expected something different after admitting what she had done. She was not entirely sure what. A change in Kennedy’s face, perhaps. That little flicker people sometimes had when they learned enough about you to start rearranging their opinion.

Instead, Kennedy had given her something of her own.

By the time she finished, Maeve was staring at her.

“Jesus, Kennedy.”

It came quietly, without judgement.

Maeve sniffed and wiped beneath her nose with the back of her hand, no longer pretending the creek spray had anything to do with her face. A strange little breath escaped her, almost a laugh but not quite enough to become one.

“I thought you were going to look at me different.”

There was something painfully relieved in the admission.

“I was sittin’ here thinkin’ I’d finally said it out loud and that was it. You’d know what I’d done and there’d be this... thing between us after.” Maeve shook her head. “And then you go and tell me that.”

Her gaze dropped to Kennedy’s hand around the spoon. For all the differences between them, the polished American girl with her bows and books and careful way of presenting herself, and the girl from Achill who had spent years running from one place to another, Maeve suddenly recognised something painfully familiar underneath.

“You scare yourself too.”

The words were soft.

Maeve looked back towards the creek for a while. The stones beneath the water had settled again, though she could still feel every one of them through the soles of her boots.

“I don’t think you’re a killer.”

She said it simply.

“You were frightened. Someone was tryin’ to hurt you and you had somethin’ inside you that you didn’t understand yet.” Her mouth tightened slightly. “And the bow thing... I don’t know. Maybe your instinct knows how to kill. Mine knows how to tear the ground apart when I’m angry. Doesn’t mean that’s all either of us are.”

That one cost her something.

Maeve knew it the moment she said it, because accepting it for Kennedy meant leaving open the possibility that it might also be true for herself.

Her eyes stung again.

“Fuck’s sake.”

She laughed this time, small and wet, and rubbed quickly at one eye.

“You realise you’ve made me think about things now. Very inconsiderate.”

There was no real bite behind it.

Maeve drew one knee closer and rested her forearm across it, looking at Kennedy with an openness that had not been there when they first crouched beside the creek.

“That bit about choices...” She hesitated, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I think I like that.”

Not believed. Not yet.

Liked.

“Because I’ve spent years thinkin’ there was this line somewhere. Before those men, and after. Like once I crossed it, there was somethin’ about me everyone else just hadn’t found out yet.”

Maeve swallowed.

“But you killed someone and I’m sittin’ here listening to you, and I don’t think you’re horrible. I don’t think you’re dangerous because of it. I don’t think Skjoldr should run away from you.”

Her brow furrowed as the obviousness of what she had just said came back around on her.

“So maybe...” She looked down, embarrassed by how difficult two words suddenly were. “Maybe I could try bein’ a little less sure I’m different.”

Maeve was quiet for another moment before she shifted closer and bumped her shoulder gently against Kennedy’s.

“Funny.”

A small smile pulled at her mouth.

“I thought you and me were nothin’ alike.”

Her gaze lingered on Kennedy, warmer now, with none of the guardedness that had existed between them before.

“Turns out we’re both a bit of a disaster.”

Maeve sniffed again and wiped her cheek.

“But... thanks. For tellin’ me.”

This time there was no joke hiding behind it.

“I know that wasn’t easy.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Kennedy said with a shrug. “You just slowed down long enough to stand still and listen. You made the choice to talk to someone, and you took the risk of being vulnerable. I just gave you back what you gave me. That’s what friends are supposed to do for each other.”

Kennedy gave off the first impression of being cold and haughty, some beautiful, untouchable thing most people would never experience simply because they hadn’t been born into the circles she traveled in. Her turned-up nose and unapologetic love of luxury only seemed to reinforce the image. But there was something kinder and more self-aware beneath the polished exterior. Beneath all the confidence was a young woman who had lost everything and had been forced to rebuild herself brick by painstaking brick, sometimes with help, but more often on her own.

“I got mad and mean because I know what it feels like to be completely out of control,” she continued, her voice quieter now. “And I know what it’s like to have the last few things you love taken away from you. I know how dangerous that can become, not just for you, but for the people around you.” She shook her head, letting out a small, frustrated breath. “And I’m so incredibly jealous that you have a family that still wants to love you.”

The admission seemed to catch even her off guard. Kennedy looked away for a moment before forcing herself to meet Maeve’s eyes again.

“Do you know what I would give to have my family back? To know there’s a home somewhere that’s waiting for me? You’re missed and you’re loved. You have people who are still reaching for you, and I can’t believe you would deny yourself those things because you’re afraid of what might happen.” Her expression softened. “You already lost enough. You don’t have to choose to lose them too.”

Maeve’s face changed slowly as Kennedy spoke.

She understood where it was coming from. That was what stopped the first defensive answer from escaping her. Kennedy had lost people in ways Maeve had not, and there was something raw beneath the jealousy that made it impossible to take the words as an attack.

But you have a family that still wants to love you landed badly.

Maeve looked down at the canteen in her hands, turning it once between her palms before setting it carefully on the bank beside her.

“That’s not really what happened.”

Her voice was quiet, but there was something firmer underneath it now.

“I didn’t look at me family one morning and decide I’d rather be somewhere else. Me mam had just died. I was fourteen, Kennedy. Fourteen, and suddenly the ground was answerin’ me.”

For a moment, Maeve’s gaze remained fixed on the creek.

There had always been stories on Achill. Old stories about women touched by something older than themselves, gifts that people once would have called blessings from the gods because there had been no better language for them. Maeve had grown up with those stories as stories, the sort of things carried between generations until nobody quite remembered where truth ended and telling began.

Her mother had made them real.

“She had it before me,” Maeve said. “The earth. Mam could feel it. Move it. Not exactly like I can now, but it was hers before it was mine.”

Her throat tightened around the last word.

“When I was little, it was just another strange thing about her. Something I knew without really understandin’ it. There were stories about women like her going back longer than anyone could properly remember. Gifts from the old gods, people called them. Mam never talked about herself like she was some goddess, mind. She was just Mam.”

A faint smile tried to appear and did not quite manage it.

“Then she died, and suddenly it was happenin’ to me.”

Maeve rubbed beneath one eye with her thumb, more from habit now than tears.

“I didn’t feel gifted. I felt terrified.”

That was the part Kennedy’s words had missed.

“I’d get angry and things would move. I’d panic and the ground would crack. And the one person who might’ve been able to tell me what the hell was happenin’ was gone.” Maeve shook her head. “So I ran. Didn’t think about tomorrow or what Amelia and Saoirse would think, or what anyone would say if I came back. I just knew I couldn’t be there anymore.”

She drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

“And after you’ve run for a while, going back gets harder.”

Weeks became months. England. Foster homes. Streets. Artur. America. Each new place had put another mile between Maeve and the girl who had left Achill frightened out of her mind.

“You start thinkin’ they’ll hate you for leaving. Or they’ll ask why you stayed gone so long and you won’t have an answer that doesn’t sound stupid.” She glanced towards Kennedy. “Then another month passes, and now it feels worse. So you keep goin’.”

There was no self-pity in it. If anything, Maeve sounded frustrated by how simple it all seemed when said aloud compared with how impossible it had felt while living it.

“So I get why you’re jealous. I do.” Her expression softened. “And I’m sorry for what happened to your family. I wouldn’t pretend I know what that feels like.”

She paused.

“But it’s not the same as what happened with mine.”

Maeve swallowed, thinking of Amelia and Saoirse somewhere in Avalon. The ache sharpened immediately.

“I didn’t choose to lose them.”

Her voice wavered slightly on that, but she held Kennedy’s gaze.

“I loved them when I left. I love them now. I’ve spent years not knowing whether they’d slam the door in me face or grab hold of me and never let go.” A small, helpless shrug followed. “Maybe they’ve been waiting for me. Maybe they haven’t. I don’t know.”

And that uncertainty had frightened Maeve almost as much as the thought of rejection.

“When we find Amelia and Saoirse...” She stopped, corrected herself without seeming to notice she had done it. “When we get them back, maybe I’ll finally have to stop runnin’ from that question too.”

Maeve reached for the canteen again, although she did not pick it up.

“So you’re right about one thing. I’ve lost enough.”

Her eyes lowered briefly to the water.

“But I’m not throwing me family away because I’m frightened of what might happen.”

She looked back at Kennedy, gentler now.

“I’ve been frightened of finding out what already did.”

“I’ve always felt like the unknown is so much scarier than reality, but sometimes facing the answer can be harder than living with the uncertainty.” Kennedy sighed softly. “My relationship with my father ended when he turned his back on me, but it took a bullet for me to finally accept the reality of what that meant. Nothing was ever going to change what I was to him. His death simply made that conclusion permanent.”

The memories came rushing back with all its blood, gore, the awful finality of what she had witnessed. The mental image no longer made her cry, but that didn’t make it any less ugly. Some memories simply lost their power without ever becoming beautiful.

“We’ll get your sisters back,” Kennedy said, her voice firm with a certainty that left little room for doubt. “And you can take them home.”

That certainty was one of the things that made Kennedy so difficult to break. She refused to give up, refused to surrender, even when circumstances gave her every reason to do both. That stubborn tenacity had carried her through things that should have left her shattered. But when that same determination was turned toward someone else, it felt different, it was warmer and more purposeful.

Maeve would never have to wonder whether Kennedy would fight for her.

“And if what you find is awful,” Kennedy continued, her expression softening, “we’ll be here for you when you have to face it. Whatever the truth is, you won’t have to face it alone.”

Maeve held Kennedy’s gaze after the promise was made.

We’ll get your sisters back.

There was no sensible reason those words should settle anything inside her. Kennedy could not know where Amelia and Saoirse were, whether they were frightened, whether Morgan had already reached them in ways Maeve could not undo. None of them could promise what waited at the end of Avalon.

The familiar voice found that uncertainty almost at once.

She promises what she has no power to give you.

Maeve’s jaw tightened.

For once, she did not answer it, even inside her own head.

She looked instead at Kennedy, at the woman who had begun the morning awkwardly apologising beside a pile of dirty cookware and somehow ended it knowing something about Maeve that nobody else did. More importantly, Kennedy had trusted her in return. Maeve understood the weight of that better than most things. Secrets had bought meals, shelter and passage during the years she had spent running. People could turn whatever they knew about you into leverage frighteningly quickly.

Kennedy had been handed something sharp and had simply held it carefully.

That mattered.

“I believe you,” Maeve said.

The admission surprised her a little. Not because she believed Kennedy could bend Avalon to her will or guarantee how any of this ended, but because she believed the part underneath the promise. If things went badly, Kennedy would still be there. Maeve had spent years expecting people to disappear once staying became difficult; allowing herself to believe otherwise felt almost reckless.

How readily you give pieces of yourself away.

Maeve breathed slowly through her nose.

Maybe she was.

She was tired of every kindness having to survive an examination before she allowed herself to touch it.

Without making a great production of it, Maeve shifted closer and wrapped her arms around Kennedy. There was a moment of stiffness born mostly from unfamiliarity with being the one to start something like this, then she held on properly. Her cheek brushed Kennedy’s shoulder and she shut her eyes for a second, letting the creek and the distant sounds of the camp fill the space where another confession might otherwise have gone.

When she finally drew back, there was still a trace of dampness beneath her eyes, but she made no attempt to hide it.

“I’m glad you came over this mornin’.”

It was simple, and Maeve meant every bit of it.

“I am too,” Kennedy agreed as she watched Maeve collect herself. She knew that feeling all too well, the brave front that hid the pain beneath it while creating a false sense of strength that made everyone else believe you were stronger than you really were. "We're better with friends."

Maeve's eyes wandered briefly towards the camp where the others were finishing their preparations. In a little while they would split up again and walk deeper into a place that already knew far too much about them. There were children somewhere ahead, her sisters among them, and more questions than Maeve had any idea how to answer.

But something had changed beside the creek.

Not fixed. She did not feel fixed, and she suspected she would have hated the word if Kennedy had offered it.

Just less alone.

Maeve picked up her canteen and stood, then held a hand down towards Kennedy to help her up.

“Come on,” she said, a small warmth remaining in her face. “Best not make them come lookin’ for us.”

The voice at the edge of her thoughts remained silent this time.

Maeve found she preferred Kennedy’s.

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