She had let herself hide away a lot. Everything had gotten so messy and complicated, and it was much easier to just...disappear into Mirrorspace now that she could do that, when she was spending time as Sappho, not Blair. She’d shown up for that big fight with the giant monster, out in space, but that was the biggest thing she’d done, and she felt pretty lucky that she’d gone unnoticed. Liker, she hadn't even wanted to show up for free food and hanging out with The Girls, Gender Neutral of the Court. It was weird, for her, and she knew the people who loved her had taken notice.
Alistair had even tried to sit her down for—shudders—a talk. Her big brother loved her, she knew, but she’d dodged the question because admitting that she’d gotten all tangled up with two different girls and made one of them go full yandere was not exactly something she wanted to admit to, and he would definitely judge her for it, which she totally deserved but also did not want to deal with.
At least she was single now. And maybe she knew a little more about herself than she had when she’d gotten all entangled in this, like that she could very sincerely love two people at the same time. Which, like. Her brother was literally entangled in a four person polycule raising two stupid adorable kids, so clown shoes moment for her, not considering that she might be polyamorous.
But at least she was doing better now. She could admit that she was maybe running in a little headfirst with Bélénos, but who could blame her? A meet cute like that didn’t happen every day, after all. It was like fate had pulled them together, and now she got to see how it went. Even after nearly fumbling a little.
And honestly, like…she was young! Youth was a time to make mistakes and be stupid, and if she kept telling herself that she could totally justify how scummy she felt. She could pretend that what she had done was just a little bit silly, and not something that probably hurt two people very deeply.
Compartmentalizing. Lying to herself. Pretending it had never happened. All of those, the tools of someone putting her past in a box and deciding to move forward newer, better, smarter, because she didn’t need to dwell on it anymore and she could just be…better. Fixed. Whatever.
All of that was totally a reasonable way to feel, she was sure of it. And it wasn’t avoidant that she hadn’t even thought about dating a girl until she’d all but fallen into Olivia via mirror mishap.
She was sooo healthy and sooo over everything that had happened, really. The thought of dealing with it didn’t give her outsized anxiety, at all. It definitely didn’t stress her out to think about talking to Olivia about it, except that it totally did and the very prospect twisted her up inside.
She deserved that, probably. Olivia would almost certainly look at her differently if she knew that Sappho had screwed around and flirted while she was in a relationship and ended up in a messy situation with another girl and basically put it down to “well, she hasn’t asked if I’m dating anybody, so it’s fine that I haven’t told her.”
It wasn’t fine. It had not been fine at any point in the equation, and everything that happened after was entirely her fault. But Sappho really, really didn’t like thinking about that part. She wanted to focus on the parts that were way more excusable, and just…
Ugh, getting entangled with a new girl was messy when it brought back all these awful feelings from before. As nice as things with Olivia were, Sappho was…afraid. Afraid of ******** up and hurting someone else all over again, especially someone as sweet as Olivia who deserved her best.
Maybe she needed to slow things down. Maybe they hadn’t gotten too far anyway, just…just a nice little walk in the park at night to enjoy the flowers and the lights. Maybe there was still time to keep herself from ******** up irretrievably. Maybe she could just…she didn’t know, figure something out. Not act like a total disaster area.
(Be upfront about the fact that she was poly? Be less ******** stupid about other cute girls? Sappho didn’t know. The first thing wasn’t too scary; if she told Olivia the truth and Olivia wasn’t into it, that was sadly the end of that. The second thing….she wanted to believe it was just as easy. She knew that it probably wouldn’t be, because she was ******** stupid.)
Ugh. Dithering in her own head wasn’t getting Sappho anywhere, and honestly, there were better places to dither than on a lonely rooftop when she wasn’t even doing any draining. There was a mirror in the alley below, she knew because she used it frequently; she might as well check on her Realm and spend a little time there. At least that place was always pleasant, and more importantly, it was guaranteed to be safe. No one was going to interrupt her ruminations there, the way someone might if she kept gazing into the middle distance here on Earth.
She was fairly graceful, she thought, leaping down onto the ground and landing in front of the mirror, which was always a positive. At least she always felt pretty powered up; even though she usually did as Blair, too, it was a lot easier to ignore bad hair days when the magic nicely put her hair into a pretty little partial updo and smoothed out any creases or messiness in her fuku.
She sighed as she stepped through the mirror, into the comforting silver of Mirrorspace. This, truly, was where she was safest. Maybe not happiest, she liked being around people too much to enjoy Mirrorspace's lonely halls for long, but definitely safest, for sure.
She let those lonely halls carry her to the Common Room, to the giant golden mirror that led her to the Mirrorscape, then through to her own Realm, and as soon as she saw it, she let out a little sigh of contentment.
She had worked so hard on this place, to make it beautiful. It was designed like a nature park, and her favorite part was the pond she’d slowly built up, adding a few blue and gray crystals here and there to make rock formations and more water, green crystals for plants—all of it. Looming over the whole thing was a tree that she had put months into, a beautiful weeping floral tree with blossoms she couldn’t quite identify that seemed to always be in bloom. She’d bought a hanging bench and lugged it in to set it up among the branches, and it was her own private oasis. She’d even set up a little minifridge for drinks and snacks so she could hang out and destress whenever she wanted to. She had some ideas in mind for little picnic tables or something, but until she could do that, she was content with her bench and her flowers and her bottle of raspberry lemonade that she pulled out of her little refrigerator to drink while she sat.
At least girl problems felt…farther away, here. It didn’t matter that she might mess things up when she could stare at the garden she’d cultivated with magic and careful thought and planning, once she’d figured out what was what.
Years of work, really; stolen hours spent combing Mirrorspace for crystals and retreating here to place and plant them, so that she could make this perfect private oasis.
Her current project was a little waterfall. It was only a few stones high, so far, and she needed some more grey and blue crystals to really make it nice, like the ones around fancy pools, to really get a cascade into the pond (which kinda felt more like a swimming pool itself, since the water was always pretty and clear). Maybe once it was done, she could take Olivia here…really show her a nice time and get some truly private hours with a very cute girl.
Yeah, okay, Sappho had just decided to take it slow, sure, but…maybe she was bad at that. And maybe she needed to talk to Olivia and ask her what she wanted, and maybe this was the perfect place to do that.
So, she just…had to get the cute girl to agree to one more walk in the park, except this time they wouldn’t be Blair and Olivia, they’d be Sappho and Bélénos and they would be here, on her Realm, in the private sanctuary she’d cultivated.
Honestly, that sounded really, really nice. Sappho hoped that whenever she got to show it off, it was as impressive to Bélénos as it felt to her.
And maybe she’d get to kiss a girl on her cute little swing, among the flowers. That…sounded really, really nice.
[wc: 1522 words]
