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Serval’s first instinct is to think that she’s joking.
She almost half-expects Cocolia to step out from some corner of the office, hands clasped together, a little sardonic smile on her lips—“Hey, just kidding!!” she’d say, and Serval would punch her shoulder; maybe throw her arms around Cocolia and ruffle her hair up a bit.
But, no. There it is, right on the bottom in fountain pen ink. ‘We wish you the best in finding new, suitable employment. As signed by Supreme Guardian Cocolia Rand’. Qlipoth above—she’d even taken the time to dot her damned i’s and underline her fucking name. Cocolia’s a nut when it comes to matters of office, but Serval had always assumed she was exempt from that side of hers.
Well. That’s what she gets for assuming.
Serval holds the sheet of paper until the surface warps. She sets it down, wipes the sweat of her palms off onto her tights, and reads again. It’s only about the fifth time she re-reads the sentence ‘Please list and return any property of the Technology Division within your possession’ that the truth of the matter settles into the pit of her stomach. A cold, dark pit; as bleak as the Fragmentum that surrounds her.
“Fuck my life,” she mutters, quiet and resolute. Because, what else is there to really say to something like this? She kicks the wood under her desk, hard, and closes her eyes. “Fuck. Fucking-fuck-fuckity-fucking fuck.”
It’s not even like this—Cocolia going all professional Supreme Guardian mode and shutting her out—is something that Serval couldn’t have predicted. She just feels like an idiot, staring at the bold NOTICE OF TERMINATION tagline at the top of the page, printed in cold, unfeeling type. More the fool Serval, for thinking that all the arguments she’d had with Cocolia over the past several weeks wouldn’t culminate in this exact situation.
Serval’s not an idiot. It’s not like she doesn’t know why Cocolia’s doing this to her.
They’d disagreed on stuff in the past—Serval’s practice times, where Cocolia leaves her body wash, whose job it is to do the laundry or to wash the dishes. That was all domestic shit, the sort of arguments that could be smoothed over with a box of pizza, a bottle of chardonnay, a kiss on the cheek that threatens all-too-often to brush elsewhere.
The Stellaron. It's always the fucking Stellaron.
“To be quite honest, I don’t understand your fixation on that bloody thing,” Cocolia had muttered, one night over dinner. She’d had that closed-eyed fluttery look to her, as though the mere act of talking to Serval would've enough to bring on a migraine.
How couldn’t she get annoyed at something like that? Serval lashes out in the only way she knows how; teeth bared. “Isn’t it, like, the Supreme Guardian’s job to improve the lives for Belobog’s people? And you won’t even let me look at it.”
“It’s like an obsession, with you.”
“Like your obsession with keeping me away from it?”
Cocolia had always been good with her words. It was part of why Serval had grown so attached to her so quickly, wasn’t it? But - Qlipoth, the woman could wield those words like a knife when she wanted to. And that expression when she’d said it, as casual as telling Serval she was too busy to go to lunch; “I get it, Serval. You care more about the Stellaron than you care about me.”
Serval slept at Gepard’s for the next two weeks after that. A concession by way of separation.
It’d done nothing to fix the problem.
Her body moves before her mind does. The termination notice creases between her fingers, and Serval pushes out of her office with a sudden anger that coats her insides like tar. She tears through the halls like a feline ferocity; fangs bared, a mouth that bleeds. She pushes past the doors to Cocolia’s office, and slams the termination notice down on the desk.
It makes her feel big. It makes her feel powerful.
“Hey,” Serval says, “What the hell is this?”
Cocolia blinks dismissively towards the crumpled, sweat-creased notice, and then raises her gaze to meet Serval. It’s an expectant gaze; the sort of look one gives to a problem that’ll eventually sort itself out. She doesn’t even look annoyed.
“A termination notice. You can read, can’t you?”
“God. Don’t be dense, Cocolia. You know what I mean.”
She shrugs. Like this is the least important thing in the world. Like she could be doing anything else in the world, so far removed from the insignificance of domestic affair, and that it was Serval who was mindlessly intruding on her precious personal time. “I’d already told you that further inquiries into the nature of the Stellaron would see you removed from your position within the Architects. I could handle all the personal prodding, sure—but to submit an entire research proposal, Serval? Did you think you’d be able to slip this through the council without my notice?”
Serval falters. She’d—been hoping that the council of Architects would be able to persuade Cocolia when faced with the sheer extensiveness of her proposal. She’d even gotten help from Pela on the finances, but… It didn’t even matter, really. It wouldn’t sting as much, if Cocolia wasn’t so flippant about it.
“Nothing that the Technology Division undertakes is done so without my express permission, Serval. You know that. I was very clear on where I stand on this—so the consequences are entirely on you.”
“Yes, but - termination? I can handle a rejection, but—”
“—Can you?”
Cocolia’s voice is entirely too gentle.
She’s right, too. If Serval could handle being told that she wasn’t allowed to see the Stellaron in person, then she wouldn’t be in Cocolia’s office right now. Instead she’d be… God. Home, probably. Playing the guitar Cocolia got her, not being scolded like a kid. It’s enough to make Serval want to scream, or cry, or some ungodly combination of both.
“There is no doubt that your contributions to the Architects have been invaluable, Serval,” she begins. A mouthful of platitudes that will do nothing to soothe Serval’s conflicted mind. “But you know that access to the Stellaron has been prohibited for centuries before I became Supreme Guardian. Laws like those don’t simply change in a matter of months.”
Cocolia places her hand over Serval’s. It feels like ice.
“Be thankful that I’m simply putting you out of a job instead of exiling you from Belobog outright.”
Qlipoth protect her. She huffs out a small peal of laughter, breathy and incredulous. Snatches her hand away from Cocolia’s and holds it close to her chest. “God. God. And you - you considered that?” The world grows just a bit colder, and all Serval can do is laugh. “For even a moment? I can’t believe you.”
Cocolia’s face hardens again. A moment of impassivity stretched into something approaching infinity. “I am objective in my rulings. Despite what you may think of me.”
“Yeah,” Serval says, and shakes her head. She’d come in here thinking that she’d give Cocolia a piece of her mind, but she thinks that just for a moment, she’d kill someone to go back in time and throw that proposal in the trash. Or perhaps she'd grab herself by the shoulders and tell her, you can't. You shouldn't. Something more dignified than throwing herself at Cocolia’s feet and begging not to be thrown away. The one line she will not cross. “Look, I, uh. Yeah. It’s whatever. I can be gracious about this.”
For the first time in a month, Cocolia smiles. Serval stares—but not in rapture, the way she might have whenever Cocolia used to clap for her midnight performances. The feeling that curls around her spine, she realizes, is horror.
“I appreciate that,” Cocolia says. A too-long beat of silence passes between them. Then, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’ve some paperwork to attend to before noon.”
“Sure,” Serval says, “That’s - that’s cool.”
It’s only when Serval’s halfway out the door does she hear Cocolia call, “I’ll see you at home tonight.” Serval doesn’t dignify it with a response. What sort of response could she even give, to something like that? To destroy Serval’s livelihood with as much consideration as one would give to a fly—then to play house after the fact?
She walks through the halls back to her office listlessly, like a ghost on the verge of fading. She thinks that Dunn greets her near the common rooms, and she imagines that she might’ve said hello back. It doesn’t matter. Serval can’t think of anything except Cocolia; the ice of her fingers, the alien look in her eyes.
The Supreme Guardian is nothing like her Cocolia. She’s like - one of those monsters in the Fragmentum. A zombified corpse that plays at being human. Treating Serval like a stranger. I’ll see you at home tonight. Be thankful I didn’t exile you.
Her office seems a bit smaller by the time Serval returns. Gingerly, she shuts the door behind herself. Twists the lock shut. Jiggles the doorknob to make sure it’s locked. There’s pictures of her and Cocolia that’ll need to get moved from the office back to their house. There’s one that hangs on the wall. Gepard had taken a picture of Serval teaching Cocolia how to finger a fretboard, and she’d loved it so much she’d insisted on getting it developed.
Two more on her desk—one after Serval’s first day at the Tech Division, the other taken at their graduation ceremony.
Serval was smart enough to blow any practicum out of the water, but Cocolia was always the better study. A deluge of unwanted memories flood through her now. Cocolia brewing coffee while Serval studied in the main room. Cocolia giving her notes to Serval, claiming her handwriting was cleaner than Serval’s could ever hope to be. Her lipstick staining the margins of the page. ‘You owe me!’ scribbled in pencil on the back.
“You think you can get a 90 on your final, Servie?” she’d said once, fingers dancing electricity over Serval’s inner thigh, “I only kiss winners, y’know. I bet I could whip you right into shape.”
It feels so distant now. Like she could’ve died twenty times between now and then, and nothing would’ve changed at all.
Cocolia was always the more pragmatic one between the two of them. Ambitious, driven. Focused on the future, on the what-could-be. All the little things that Serval had been in love with once upon a time; now nothing more than a laundry list of traits that separate the two of them. More the fool Serval, huh?
She sits at her desk and stares at the room that surrounds her. The bright light that filters in from the windows behind her. The pale, orange-yellow walls broken up by nothing more than memories of a woman who’s changed to the point of being unrecognizable. The termination notice that she’d managed to remember to bring back to her office. She closes her fists around the ruined paper and imagines that it’s Cocolia’s neck instead.
Serval screams.
“You sound good.”
Serval let the last few notes ring out across the room before she opened her eyes. Cocolia sat on her bed cross-legged, a gentle smile raising her lips. Serval couldn’t help but to feel a smile of her own creep up on her. There was a sort of energy that Cocolia had that was utterly infectious, in a way.
“What? I haven’t even played anything yet. I’m just checking the tuning.”
Cocolia’s smile widened. “So perhaps I noticed a discordant note here or there… I’m nothing if not supportive, though.”
“Could say that again,” Serval laughed. “My amplifier could be boosted to shit and you’d still think I sound amazing. Gotta say, Coco—that sort of support is going to go straight to my ego.”
“Ha! Qlipoth forbid!”
They exchanged another round of giggles and smiles, before Serval went back to tweaking with the pegs. “Yo, you remember the tuning order I taught you?”
Cocolia stared at Serval, her nose scrunched into a cute look of contemplation. She wasn’t really musically trained—it wasn’t exactly a priority when it came down to Cocolia’s studies. But perhaps it was because of Serval’s passion for the musical arts that Cocolia had expressed some amount of interest in learning an instrument herself.
Of course, she was more interested in the parts that built up an instrument moreso than the sounds it could produce. She was just more… interested in the complexities behind things. Cocolia was always more than happy to leave matters of the actual sound to Serval, but she was helpful enough when Serval had asked her to learn her tuning orders.
“Sure,” she’d said, and shimmied off of Serval’s bed. She sat on the little piano bench, and booted up the shitty little plastic keyboard. “Hit me.”
“E, please.”
She imagined that Cocolia derived some sort of pleasure from this ritual. Being able to take part in Serval’s hobbies, despite not having even a lick of musical prowess in her arsenal. Rather affectionately, she remembered hearing Cocolia sing in the shower for the first time—it was horrible. Off-key, off-beat, and something that was never to be repeated anywhere outside that bathroom. But it was so uniquely Cocolia that Serval couldn’t help but to swoon.
They went through the rest of the notes like a dance. Serval called out a note, and Cocolia clicking her tongue before she moves to the next key. A, move, press. D, move, press. “Oh, shoot,” Cocolia had stammered, fat fingering a note, but she hadn’t stopped. When all was said and done, Serval strummed a small riff.
“This guitar is old as shit.”
“Doesn’t sound very in tune,” Cocolia agreed.
Serval sighed. “I need to replace this old clunker, but…” Her lips quirked into a wry little expression. “You know me. Can’t give up on the good things, and I’ve been practically having wet dreams about that guitar design.”
“That so? Wow.”
“I know,” Serval crooned, “I miss her so bad, and I’ve never even gotten to know her… Ah, well. If I can’t have my dream guitar, I’ll settle for second-best.”
There was this barely noticeable smile in the corner of Cocolia’s mouth, hidden just below her teeth and tucked away into her cheek. It was different from the normal smiling that Cocolia oft gave. Not the smile that she’d give to the professors at the academy, the clean-booked environment that smelled of tech grease and the perfume meant to cover it all up. Nothing quite so fabricated under the intimacy of performance, the distance of Supreme Guardian to-be and self.
It was a more private sort of smile. The sort of smile that Cocolia would give to Serval when they were jam-packed in a club together, a room so full of people that they ended up utterly alone together. Or when Serval would perform on stage to a crowd of a few hundred, always managing to catch her girl out in the midst of a crowd. Wisps of hair that had glowed on the back of Cocolia’s head like a halo, smiling up at Serval as she danced into the tiniest corners of the night.
The thing was this: Serval had never stopped looking back. Not even after the performance ended.
“You know,” Cocolia said, letting the piano bench make this awful screeching noise as she rose to her feet, “Give me two seconds. I’ve been suddenly reminded of something.”
Serval raised an eyebrow as Cocolia moved for the door. There was a sort of lilt to her tone, a half-mischievous grin to her. The sort that could make a girl rather suspicious. “... Can I come with?”
“Nope. You stay right there.”
And Serval rather liked Cocolia when she got coy, so she did.
It was almost ten minutes later when she came back into the room, lugging a large case beside her. “Oh— wow, this was so much heavier than I thought it’d be.”
Serval blinked. “Is that…?”
“Hold your questions until I get this thing through the door frame, yeah?”
When Cocolia set the case down on Serval’s bed, she smiled. Serval, for whatever reason, could not help but to smile back. She looked so damn proud of herself, and so before either of them could say anything else, Serval took Cocolia’s chin between her fingers and kissed her right there.
“You didn’t even open it yet,” Cocolia whispered against her lips, and kissed her again.
“Hey, to be fair? I like this too,” Serval said slyly, prompting a light smack on the shoulder from the other woman.
“You’ll like this more, I think.”
And, to Cocolia’s credit, she was practically right. Within the case sits the guitar she’d designed a half-year ago. Like it had just popped straight out of the blueprints she’d designed for them.
“Holy shit,” Serval said, “You’re insane.”
“I think the correct response is, ‘I love you so much Coco, please let me babysit Bronya for the next week as thanks for this magnanimous gift you’ve given me’, but I’ll accept a ‘holy shit’ too.”
Delicately, the guitar is pried from its case. Serval inspected it with as much reverence as one would inspect an Aeonic idol, fingers hovered delicately over the black wood. “The varnish on this is sweet. But - how? I wasn’t able to get anyone in Belobog to source the right kind of wood. And these strings!”
“Yup, carbon steel alloy. No point in working so hard to become the Supreme Guardian if I can’t reap a little benefit or two here or there,” Cocolia replied, and winked. “Happy birthday, Servie.”
“Wow.” Serval whistled. Then, she set the guitar back into its case. “How much longer until Bronya gets back from school, do you think?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not for another three hours, at least. Why’s that?”
“Well, the appropriate thing to do would be to play a killer of a private show for you, but - and can I be honest for a sec? You look so fucking hot right now.”
She loved the way that Cocolia’s blush reached down to her neck. Slight, pinkish, imperceptible. And belonging entirely to Serval. “I - well,” Cocolia stammered, “I suppose that’s also an acceptable show of gratitude.”
She’s already packed up by the time that the Supreme Guardian returns to her home.
Serval sits in the main room with her bags. Only about four bags worth of stuff. Four bags, two suitcases. Enough to fit inside a tram back to Gepard’s, and when she’d told him what happened… He said he’d try to switch shifts with one of his guardsmen, just for her.
It’s nice to know that at least some people care.
Cocolia blinks at the sight of Serval on the couch, and tilts her head. “Is this…?”
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s not that I’m not appreciative, but, uh. Bronya’s old enough to take care of herself now, yeah? Or you can find some guard to babysit for her, or whatever. And I, uh… I dunno. Don’t think we can live together like this.”
The expression on the Supreme Guardian’s face is unreadable. Like looking through a block of ice; fractured pictures that dance and distort the memory of whatever had laid inside of it. Serval is both made to feel uncomfortable, but utterly secure in her decision. Whatever lingering hints of hesitation had festered upon the fraying edges of her heart are quickly burned to make space for this new, vast emptiness.
“I see,” Cocolia says. “I was hoping that… Well, it doesn’t matter what I was hoping.”
But it does, Serval wants to say. Because if Cocolia asked her to stay, maybe she would. If she was wanted somehow, in any small way, then maybe…
It’s cruel though. Both to herself and to Cocolia, to expect her to beg just to keep some washed up rockstar around. It’d never happen, and Serval won’t hurt herself by hoping that it will. “I’m not cutting you out of my life, or anything,” Serval says. “You’ve still got my number. You can call me whenever you want, y’know.”
Cocolia nods. Awkwardly, as though she’d been taken apart and whoever had put her back together couldn’t figure out how to make the body work again. And all she does is just stand. Stands and nods.
“And I don’t mind dropping by and checking in on Bronya. I wanted to teach her the keyboard.”
“She won’t have time for that.”
“Oh. Well… whatever.”
The silence is as thick and unbreathable as subzero air. Something that threatens to steal the breath from inside of Serval’s lungs, and wrap it around her body like a spider’s web. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. It doesn’t even matter to Serval if it’s Gepard or not; she just wants to fucking run away. “That’s my call.”
“Let me at least help with the bags, you look like you’re about to fall over—”
“Cocolia, don’t.”
She stops just a scant few inches away from Serval. It feels like this is the closest they’ve been in months, and yet… Here they stand, on completely opposite sides of the world. Serval shakes her head, and keeps shaking. “I’m just gonna wait outside for Gepard. Don’t sweat it.”
There’s a brief, lingering hesitation in Cocolia’s movements. Then, it’s gone. She nods her head, moves out of the way. “Suit yourself,” she says. She sounds tired. Like it’s been a million years since she’s gotten any rest. Like she just wants to close her eyes and sleep until the Fragmentum’s eventual ascendance.
Tough shit. Everyone’s got problems.
“Call me if you need me,” Serval says, dragging her litany of belongings behind her. “I’ll still make time for you, Coco.”
“Cocolia, now. Please.”
Serval nods, and feels as though a small, distant part of her has shattered off into the endless cold outside the walls of her home. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “Sorry.”
“Goodnight, Serval.”
“... Yeah.”
The last thing that Serval thinks about before she steps out of Cocolia’s life forever is the guitar that she’d left in what used to be their shared room. An olive branch, planted firmly into the ground by shaking hands. It would have been easy to take the gift that Cocolia had given her and treat it as little more than a free gift she’d gotten from someone Serval now hated. Yet, how could Serval ever really hate her? A little over ten years of knowing the only woman that had made life worth living couldn’t merely be erased through a couple of thin sheets of ice.
And so the guitar remains, laid untouched against the wall. An excuse, a memory left behind, a final recourse. All to be eventually forgotten.
When Gepard arrives, he wraps an arm around Serval and holds her close. Pretends he doesn’t see the tears rolling steadily down her cheeks, nor the shaking of her shoulders when she sobs into his chest.
“Hey,” he says, gentle against the crown of her head, “Let’s go home.”