At first you mistake her for another student too drunk to see the "CLOSED" sign on the door, stumbling and tripping down the stairs.
"We're closed!" you shout, and the stumbling stops, so you go back to polishing the plywood bartop til it shines like someone else's gold. You don't run the fanciest bar, but you do pride yourself on running the fanciest-looking cheap bar. Better than running a fancy-looking fancy bar, you always say. Most of the time, you even mean it.
You also pride yourself on the close rapport you build with your regulars—your real regulars, not the handful of college kids and townies that come back night after night for pilsners and pretzels—so when she finally shambles around the corner into the bar proper, your fingers don't even twitch toward the shotgun-stave you keep hidden under the counter.
"Rue? Fuck, Rue, what the hell happened to you? I thought you skipped town!"
The words spill out of your mouth unbidden and your body wants to follow them over the bar and pick her up and set her on a stool and make her a drink and make her okay again. Instead, you stand there, jaw gaping wide enough to gobble your words back up and leave them unsaid. She doesn't like touch, doesn't accept help, doesn't let her guard down around anyone, not even you, and following that instinct would be a betrayal worse than whatever was done to her to leave her like this.
She pauses, glances up at you, and the look on her face has you second-guessing how well you actually know her, because in a line of work that puts you face-to-face with the most desperate, fucked-over people in the city, you've never seen anyone look more vulnerable than this.
Her lips crack open just wide enough to rasp out, "Who's Rue?"
You vault over the fucking bar.
There's nothing, no reaction as you dash to her side and extend your arm, but before you can wrap it around her shoulders to offer some support & solace you stop yourself, try to figure out what to ask, what to say, what to do. Lucky for you, the right answer seems to be "stand there like an idiot", because she tips over like a domino right into the crook of your arm.
You're not sure if she meant to lean on you or just happened to fall in the right direction. You'll probably never work up the nerve to ask.
The two of you hobble over behind the bar. It's further than the barstools, and flipping up the heavy-ass hinged bit of the countertop sucks with just one hand, but there's an actual chair there with a real back that you use when your body gets pissed at you for making it stand behind a bar for hours at a time, and she looks like if you set her down on a stool she'd slide off like a repressed memory.
Once she's situated, you try to step away, but a tug on your coat stops you in your tracks.
"Please, don't go yet," she whispers. Then, so soft you can barely hear: "Do you know who I am?"
"Oh, honey..." The endearment slips out from between your lips before you can even consider holding it back, but you roll with it. "You're Rue. You're..."
More words try to escape, but you've got them firmly locked down.
"You're one of my clients," you eventually decide on. "You bring me stolen shit, I sell it for a cut. You're... we're... I think we're friends, too, but I guess I've never asked." The admission makes you blush.
"Safe..." she mumbles, almost too quiet to hear.
"What was that?" you ask, then wince. If she'd wanted it to be heard, she'd've said it louder.
Or maybe not, because she starts talking in a low, wavering monotone, nothing at all like the cocky thief you've gotten to know and... know well, over the years.
"Woke up in Saint-Germain. Felt tired, hazy, couldn't remember anything. My feet knew where to go, knew strange places that felt familiar, but nobody recognized me. Said I wasn't welcome, shooed me out. Heart told me to follow it instead, and it led me here. You know me? We know each other? Feels... safe, here. With you."
Saint-Germain is... not nearby. Certainly not within walking distance, but once glance at her is all it takes to know for certain that she walked the whole way. That she had to walk the whole way, had nowhere else to go, no one else to rely on.
Your eyes flick over to where your shotgun-stave lies hidden underneath the bar. You haven't had to use it since you started this gig, but you still know how, still have the spellforms tattooed on your trigger finger. Maybe it's time. Maybe whoever did this to Rue just brought you out of retirement.
It's easier to think about incredible violence, in this moment, than her specific choice of words. Easier to write off the pounding in your chest, the sweat on your palms, the anticipation in your gut as bloodlust. What else could it be?
You pointedly don't answer your own question.
"Yyyeah," you drawl after letting the silence stretch out much too long. Somehow, things snap back to how they should be anyway, so you continue, "we know each other. Pretty well, I think. You're safe here."
"I'm safe here," she echoes. It's the most confident she's sounded since she arrived.
Just then, something occurs to you. You look at her and try to coax your lips into a reassuring shape. "How long has it been since you last ate or drank anything?"
"Depends."
That can't be good. "On what?"
"Which one is for snow?"
"Rue..." You don't say her name so much as exhale it. If worry and care could condense, they'd cloud up the air between you and cling to your spectacles. Maybe they do anyway; your vision's a little blurry. "You need something to eat and drink. It won't take long, but I need to move around to get it for you. Will you be okay?"
She doesn't let go of your coat, so you shrug it off and cover her with it like you're tucking her in for the night (and the jolt you feel at that comparison can't possibly have anything to do with bloodlust but your cognitive dissonance is load-bearing right now; self-reflection can wait).
You always say your coat makes you look like a dashing butch. Your friends say it makes you look like a dumbass. You figure there's room in the world for both to be right, but even they'd be hard-pressed to say it looks anything other than adorable on her. In it, she's safe, and warm, and yours, and—
"H-how's that?" you ask, hoping she doesn't realize you sound like the schoolgirl you never got to be with her first crush.
"Safe." She sinks into the chair. "Warm." Closes her eyes. "Comfy." Takes a deep breath. "Smells nice."
Speechless, you turn around, cheeks aflame, and start grabbing what you need from the cabinets around you, even the little locked one hidden in the back of a bigger, much less interesting cabinet. After you eyeball the proportions, everything goes into your oversized hot chocolate mug, which you then shove into the spell-oven on the back counter. A quick incantation later and it's humming softly.
While you wait on that, you grab your biggest, most stereotypical beer stein, fill it to the brim with the dealcoholized draught beer you keep on hand for anyone who gets cranky if they know you're cutting them off, and bring it over to her.
"Here, drink this. Er, I'm not trying to get you drunk, it's not—"
She accepts the stein before you can finish explaining and takes a long, desperate sip, as if to say, "I trust you."
"I trust you," she says anyway, just in case.
Your eyes meet, and this time the silence doesn't stretch so much as unravel like a ball of yarn hiding something soft and warm and precious at its center, perfectly preseved.
When the spell-oven chimes, you barely manage to tear yourself away and go fetch the mug and a spoon. You don't have any candles, but a snap of your fingers creates a small, green flame hovering above the chocolate mug cake, and when you offer the mug and spoon to her, she sets down her beer and accepts reverently.
"I know you probably don't remember, but I do," you say, trying—and mutually failing—not to tear up. "Happy birthday, Rue. I promise, we'll get to the bottom of this. Together."
The tiny upturn of her lips in the candlelight is the greatest treasure anyone's ever brought you, or ever will.
