all the angels

December 14th, 1992

Alicent enters her home with her revolver out. She gets an eerie sense of deja vu—

(Church doors. A man strung up like an angel—no, a rotting carcass on a butcher’s hook). 

—as she enters, not bothering to kick off her boots in the front entryway just in case she needs to run even though it pains her to do so. An itch climbs down her spine as she thinks about the fact that she’s going to have to spend the rest of her night cleaning every inch of her house. The front door had been locked, which is a good sign. Most of the victims who were found in their homes had no signs of forced entry, but Alicent recalls at least two of them had been found with the front door unlocked. Alicent’s was locked. That was a good sign.

The house was deadly silent—something Alicent usually relished in but now dreaded. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was still lurking, watching her parade around her home with her gun out, searching for faces in the shadows. Alicent peers around every corner, lifts every curtain, inspecting every inch of her house. It’s empty. 

It’s a small place—no attics or basements, nowhere that would be easy for someone to hide. She tries not to make a habit of creating nooks and crannies for things to be lost or people to be found in and right now, she’s grateful for such a thing. As soon as Alicent sufficiently believes there’s no one in her home, she calls Rhaenyra. 

“I need you to come over,” Alicent breathes out, feeling the way her heart seems to be ricocheting off of her ribs—chills crawl up and down her skin, goosebumps rising beneath the long-sleeve shirt she wore to work today. She misses the warmth of the coffee shop, the warmth of Rhaenyra.

She half expects Rhaenyra to crack a joke, but she must be able to hear the urgency in Alicent’s voice—(and perhaps recalls Alicent’s reluctance to invite people into her home) because she immediately launches into an investigative tone. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.” 

***

Rhaenyra sits on her couch—shoes by the door (a nice gesture though she doesn’t know Alicent is already planning to scrub her floors into oblivion tonight), holding the red poppy in a gloved hand. She had arrived far quicker than Alicent thought she would and she deigns to ask how many traffic laws Rhaenyra broke in doing so. “So, does this make you our next sacrificial lamb? No lily, the absence of rebirth. I wonder if that means something.”

“I don’t know,” Alicent huffs, pacing around her living room. “I want to check the surrounding area of my property, in case there’s any trace left. It stopped snowing not long before I got home, so any footprints should still be discernible. I just… didn’t want to look alone in case…”

The danger of Alicent’s insinuation goes unsaid and Rhaenyra just looks up at her and nods. She drops the poppy into a plastic bag that Alicent will have to bring into the office tomorrow and rises from the couch. Alicent notes the time—just past midnight. She dreads the thought of going out at this hour, what she may find, but she hopes it’s nothing. It doesn’t help that her house is a bit… isolated. There are neighbors not too far down the road, but her house backs up to a patch of woods. She wouldn’t have bought such a house if not for her love of the property itself, though that love is now coming back to bite her in the ass. 

“I’m here now,” Rhaenyra assures her, hands on her hips as she looks around the house. “And you said there’s no signs of someone being inside the home?”\

Alicent shakes her head. “Door was locked. I would have noticed—there would have been snowflakes in the entryway, at the very least water droplets unless they took the time to clean up after themselves. Everything in the house is precisely where I left it. I still—I have to clean. I walked around in my shoes and my jacket and I—it’s going to be a long night for me.” 

“We’ll get through it,” is all Rhaenyra says in response and Alicent nearly loses herself in the confidence of it. As if it were just assumed that Rhaenyra was going to help her, that she would be here the moment Alicent asks. Then again, Alicent supposes, she was. She’s standing here in Alicent’s living room at a terribly late hour even though they both have work in the morning. She drove over no questions asked. Alicent doesn’t know how she knew Rhaenyra would do exactly what she needed, but she just… knew. The thought of having a trust like that strikes her so harshly she almost feels a need to sit down. 

Instead of doing so, she settles for heading into her kitchen and pulling a flashlight out of her junk drawer and tossing one over to Rhaenyra and grabbing one out for herself—another thing she had a pair of that she didn’t need. It had been a good deal at the store to get a pack of two—maybe it was some sign from the universe that one day she would have to hunt a serial killer on her own property with a partner who is surprisingly becoming a friend. 

“Let’s go hunting,” Rhaenyra says with a smile and Alicent resists the urge to roll her eyes. Part of her wishes Rhaenyra would approach this with the seriousness required for something such as this, but another, small part of her is grateful Rhaenyra is here to provide the reprieve of humor. 

“Try not to sound so joyful at the idea of me being stalked,” Alicent huffs, biting back a smile as she grabs her coat and the two of them prepare to step outside. 

Alicent brings her keys with her, locking the door behind them just to be sure no one can slip in unnoticed while the two of them are tracing the grounds. The cold immediately seeps into her skin through her clothes, feeling the sinking chill of her boots crunching against snow. It’s not currently storming, but visibility is still limited to the light of an almost full moon—it’s in waning gibbous, Alicent thinks distantly, the full moon was a mere five days ago. Alicent remembers. She wasn’t sure when she chose to learn the phases of the moon—maybe after nights and nights of staring out her window, trying to figure out how many days had passed, when her father would come get her and tell her he forgave her. 

“I doubt anyone is still here by now,” Alicent sighs as she looks around her driveway, trying to spot anything other than hers and Rhaenyra’s tracks. There hadn’t been anything when she came up the first time—she would have remembered. “But I need to be sure.”

Rhaenyra just clicks on her flashlight and motions to the wood behind Alicent’s house. “Lead the way.”

Alicent shudders as the cold settles in her bones, chasing her into the cool, dark woods. There are a few trails that intersect here and there—nothing explicitly mapped out, just traces of those who have walked before her. Alicent makes note of every path they walk down, feeling the impending claustrophobia of the trees closing in around them. The light from the moon wanes as tall, leering pines overtake the night sky. Alicent shines her flashlight everywhere she can—trying to find glimpses of any signs of life. It’s been so cold, so snowy that there are no ambient sounds of insects clicking through the night—only the crunch of the snow beneath their boots. 

“This is… creepy as shit,” Rhaenyra whispers after God knows how long of walking in silence. “And you just… live with these behind your house?”

Alicent hums, shining her light on a branch that nearly whacked her in the head. The wind whistles through the trees, an eerie noise that almost sounds like a whisper in her ear. Alicent shivers. Rhaenyra is close behind her and at times, she can almost feel the woman’s back brush against hers. The closeness is a comfort, as if she can steal some of Rhaenyra’s ever present warmth just by way of sharing the air with her. 

“I’m not exactly traipsing through the woods every Monday night,” is her response after a moment of thinking, pausing in her steps so abruptly Rhaenyra bumps into her. Alicent tries not to flinch too harshly as she makes contact with Alicent’s back, simply taking a step forward to ensure the touch doesn’t linger. Alicent’s light has found something—red blood shining against the snow. “Hm.”

Rhaenyra just watches her as Alicent’s flashlight finds a scattered trail of the liquid. It’s still shimmering with freshness. Alicent nods and the two of them begin to follow the blood off the path. Maybe a bad decision in terms of finding their way back to the mouth of the woods, but she’s fairly certain two seasoned detectives will be able to find their way back. 

The trail doesn’t go very far until the two of them find the source of the bleeding. Thankfully—not another human corpse to add to their case. Just a bleeding white-tailed deer breathing painful, broken breaths. Its eyes glimmer beneath the light of the flashlight and Alicent’s heart aches. 

“It’s been shot,” Rhaenyra nods towards the offending wound. 

Alicent kneels down beside it, following the steady stream of blood from its neck, scrutinizing the wound. “This shot should’ve killed it. A few centimeters to the left, it probably would have. Now, the poor thing is just going to choke to death on its own blood.”

“If it’s still alive, that means the shot was probably recent, we should have heard it,” Rhaenyra hums, still leaning over Alicent and holding a wider light for her as she observes the deer. 

“Not necessarily,” Alicent hums absentmindedly, her gaze still locked with the doe’s. Her brow furrows into an expression of sympathy, watching the deer struggle to take each and every breath—every inhale only causing more blood to pulse from the wound. “We’re deep in the woods and trees this tall and thick have a way of creating a cocoon. There’s a chance we heard it, but it didn’t register as anything out of the ordinary—just a car hitting a bump in the road or something like that. Or a suppressor could have been used.”

“Why would a hunter use a suppressor? And who would be out this late at night?”

“A hunter who wanted us to find this all on our own,” Alicent says with a resigned sigh as she rises to her feet, the exhaustion in her limbs causing her knees to creak a bit as she does so. “A shot like that can be missed by accident, of course, especially if the target is moving, but a shot this close… it takes a certain skill. This could be a message left, just like the poppy was. Deer hunting isn’t even legal in this county—population issues. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being crazy.”

“It’d be an eerie coincidence, that’s for sure,” Rhaenyra huffs from behind her, one hand shoved in her pocket and the other still holding the flashlight. “Why leave it alive, though?”

Alicent reaches into her holster and pulls out her service revolver, her eyes meeting the deer’s once more. “So we can be the ones to put it out of its misery.” 

Alicent winces as the shot rings through the woods—the choked, gasping breaths of the deer no longer. The night goes silent once more as Alicent tucks her revolver back into its holster. The eyes look up at her—glassy, lifeless, a new hole right in between them slowly seeping fresh blood that drips eerily onto the snow. The two of them just stand there, staring at it as if the animal will suddenly come back to life with a shuddering breath and a warning. 

After a moment, Rhaenyra is the one to break the silence, “This really can’t be good, can it?” 

Alicent reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a carton of cigarettes, shaking one loose into her palm and lighting it—a small spark in a dark and creaking wood. 

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Rhaenyra comments, neither of them making any move to return to the path. Snow is starting to fall again, Alicent can see it sifting through the branches and leaves, slowly making its way down to them.

“I don’t, I quit three years ago.” Alicent takes a long drag, inhaling and blowing the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. The only sound in the quiet woods being the crinkling of burning paper and ash. Alicent takes another. Rhaenyra just watches her as if waiting for her to chuckle or joke. Alicent catches her eyes. “I’m not kidding. I started up again after David. Don’t worry, I’ll confess to the sin of addiction next time I can step in a church without having a panic attack. That was a joke.” 

Rhaenyra doesn’t laugh or even chuckle, but the corner of her lip does turn up in slight amusement. “I—this isn’t a come on—but I need you to know that watching you… shoot a deer without blinking and then light up a cigarette is probably one of the hottest things I’ve seen someone do.”

Alicent blushes before she can help it. Something unnamed stirs within her as she avoids Rhaenyra’s gaze, brushing past the woman as they begin to follow the trail of blood back to the path. “That sounds an awful lot like a come on, Targaryen.”

“No—because I explicitly prefaced it which absolves me of any accusations,” Rhaenyra hums as they traipse through the snow. Alicent rolls her eyes. “Besides, I wouldn't do that to you.” 

The last part is almost too genuine for Alicent to handle. Rhaenyra appears almost breathless when she says it, her shoulder brushing lightly against Alicent’s while they walk, her head turned to watch Alicent’s expression. She tries to think about a universe in which Rhaenyra would come onto her—if Rhaenyra would flirt with her. She thinks back to her earlier images of Rhaenyra flirting with girls in bars. If—in another life where they weren’t doing this and they didn’t already know the worst of each other, or a life where maybe Alicent was normal and she learned how to socialize and did all the things women were supposed to do—if Rhaenyra would approach her. If she’d tilt her head and say something to make Alicent giggle like a schoolgirl and then offer to buy her a drink. 

Alicent knows this is a dangerous path to tread—one shouldn’t linger on universes other than their own, lest a stupid sort of hope, a sort of yearning be forced to settle within them. This was a lesson Alicent learned young. She yearned for a life where her mother was alive, where her father did not become the man he did, a life where her brother called more—the two of them not separated by the horrors they shared. A hope like that in a life like this one can only serve to make Alicent hate herself more than she already does. She will never be a girl in a bar being hit on by—by Rhaenyra. Not that she wants Rhaenyra to hit on her—it’s merely a… hypothesis. Of sorts. A thought lingering longer than it should. 

“Did I lose you, Hightower?” Rhaenyra’s voice knocks her out of her stupor, but the playfulness of it almost knocks her right back into this warm, yellow-colored fantasy. 

“Sorry,” Alicent mutters, finishing her cigarette and dropping it into the snow—watching the small embers fizzle and disappear against the unwavering chill of the frost. “Just thinking about the case… I feel like we’re getting absolutely nowhere. Just waiting for them to attack one of us.” 

“If it works it works,” Rhaenyra hums and Alicent’s only response is to smack her in the arm.

“Not the thing to say to someone who already has one dead partner,” Alicent huffs, already wishing she had another cigarette. It wasn’t a lie—she had actually quit three years ago and it had been almost too easy to do so. David’s death, however, had left something in her unsatiated, itching for a release. So, she picked it back up again. Here and there, nothing like she once did. Though, she can feel the itch slowly starting to return—just like everything else from her past is slowly but surely rising to the surface. “Though it seems they have a penchant for chasing me this time.”

“See? More proof that your dream didn’t mean anything,” Rhaenyra reminds her as they trek back down the path they came. Alicent remembers the way—she doesn’t even have to think about it, just retracing their steps back through the snow while barely looking. She feels strangely relaxed with Rhaenyra by her side, nothing unlike the eerie stillness from when they first entered the woods. She should chastise Rhaenyra for joking at a time like this, but she can’t bring herself to, not when it makes her feel like this.

“Right, the dream,” she nods, biting her lip as she thinks about it. Her dream. Her dream that meant nothing. The dream where she and Rhaenyra were in bed together as if they had lived a whole life with one another. A whole life Alicent would never reach. She had never pictured herself living a life with anyone. Like she told Rhaenyra one of the first days they met—boys never paid much attention to her and she never cared to seek them out. She had little doubt she would never get over her oddities long enough to find a man willing to tolerate them. Let alone one willing to tolerate them enough to marry her. It wasn’t something she thought about; wasn’t something she pictured for herself. 

They arrive at the mouth of the woods and Alicent takes her first deep breath in one feels like hours, watching the snow fall and coat her rooftop. She can’t wait for winter to be over. She half expects there to be some big beast waiting there for them, ready to swallow them up into its gaping maw, but there is nothing. Nothing save for the snow and Alicent’s house. 

The two of them make the remaining journey in silence until Alicent is standing there, unlocking her front door. She expects Rhaenyra to leave—the make some comment about the hour and drive home, but she just stands there and waits for Alicent to open the door for her. 

Alicent stands in the entryway, looking at her expectantly. Rhaenyra stands on the stoop, hands on her pockets as if she’s waiting for permission to step inside. Then—Alicent realizes—she is. 

“Come on, it’s cold,” Alicent whispers, her words only a little shaky as she opens the door wide enough for Rhaenyra to enter behind her. “You aren’t going to go home? It’s nearly one. Probably past that, maybe. I don’t know how long we were out there.”

“Well,” Rhaenyra starts, kicking off her shoes and placing them neatly on the rack as Alicent locks the door behind them. “You said you had to clean and you wouldn’t sleep until you cleaned, so I thought I could help you. If you want me to leave, I can but—”

“No, no,” Alicent cuts her off before she even realizes she’s saying it. She’s too caught off guard by the offer. She hadn’t even realized she’d said her comments about having to clean her house out loud, let alone given Rhaenyra the idea that she had to stay and help. It’s almost too much to bear—everything about Rhaenyra is too much to bear. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.” She shrugs, looking around the house. “Besides, it’ll go faster with the two of us and I know you need all the sleep you can get.” 

She should say no. Alicent has never been particularly good at accepting help, but something about help from Rhaenyra has become far too easy. In just a couple of weeks, Alicent feels more known than perhaps she ever has and she has absolutely no idea what to do with it. It feels—like a cheek shoved in the dirt beneath an unnamed pressure, a pressure that has followed Alicent through her entire life. The brush of earth beneath her, dust in her mouth, clinging to her throat. Alicent has no name for such a thing—not yet, 

“Okay,” Alicent finally says, not realizing how long Rhaenyra has been standing there staring at her—waiting for her offer to be accepted or declined. “Okay, we’ll clean.”

So, the two of them do. Alicent ties her hair back and grabs all of her cleaning supplies, trying not to focus too much on the way Rhaenyra is just watching her. They divvy up the work and Alicent gets a moment alone—her first in hours as she scrubs the kitchen floor, looking for any speck of remaining dirt. She hates feeling unclean, she hates when she feels out of control in her own space. She scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until her skin is burning from the cleaner. The noise of Rhaenyra in the other room is strangely comforting to her—partially because she knows it means she’ll have less work to do but and partially because for the first time in a very long time, Alicent doesn’t want to be alone.

It must be well past four in the morning by the time the two of them finish. There’s sweat dripping from Alicent’s brow, her skin burns and there are bags under her eyes, but she’s done. The itch in her skin subsides and now all Alicent really craves is a shower.

“It’s late,” Alicent says when they’re finally done. “You can… stay if you’d like. We have to be in the office in a few hours anyway. Might as well.”

Rhaenyra just furrows her brow at her, asking, “You sure you’re okay with that?”

With a surprisingly little amount of hesitation, Alicent nods. “It’s fine—as long as you’re okay with the couch, I hope that’s okay, I don’t have much else to offer you. Maybe some sweatpants.” 

This earns a chuckle from Rhaenyra. “Thanks, Hightower. I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

Despite her casual cadence that should lend Alicent to believe this is a joke, she can see in Rhaenyra’s eyes that she means it. Something deep in her chest warms slightly at this realization. “I have very little to give.”

Rhaenyra just shrugs and Alicent gets the feeling they aren’t talking about couches or sweatpants. Even so, she disappears to her bedroom to grab said clothing anyway. If only to save herself from the piercing gaze of Rhaenyra’s light eyes. She returns with blankets for Rhaenyra—extras she keeps for when the cold becomes too much to bear and her radiator gives out, and a pair of sweatpants from her academy days. She’s almost certain Rhaenyra has a similar pair of her own and for some reason, she bites back a smile at the thought. 

“Here, this should be enough,” Alicent hums as she places the items on the coffee table, deliberately avoiding Rhaenyra’s eyes even though she can feel them boring into her side. “Uh—anything else?”

“Thank you,” Rhaenyra mutters, shirking her work shirt to just the white tank top that rests beneath it. Alicent remembers watching Rhaenyra build her furniture a few days ago—the way the sweat had built up on her skin, the lithe muscles protruding with her concentration. Alicent’s eyes linger longer than they probably should. Rhaenyra must notice her staring, knocking her out of it. “You should get some sleep, it’s late. We have to be in the office in a few hours.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alicent nods, even though her feet don’t move. “Thank you again, Rhaenyra. For your help with—everything.”

“We’re partners,” is all Rhaenyra says in response, an easy smile on her face. “You say the word and I’m there.” 

Alicent struggles to think of something to say—so she settles on nothing. She just smiles and heads into her bedroom, trying not to think about the fact that soon enough, Rhaenyra will be sleeping just in the other room. Some idiotic, foolish part of her almost thought to ask Rhaenyra to just share the bed with her—it’d be better for the cold and the comfort, but that’s a line Alicent knows she can’t cross. She’s never shared a bed with anyone, she has no idea how she’d react to it and she’d hate to take a negative reaction out on Rhaenyra. Even if the woman would understand (which she probably would because she always understands Alicent to the point where it’s almost infuriating), she doesn’t want to do that to her. She also doesn’t want to wake up and roll over to see Rhaenyra’s glassy, lifeless eyes staring back at her the way they had in the dream. 

She changes for bed and climbs in, already resigning herself to shower in the morning. Alicent expects to lie awake—so much has happened tonight that would lend itself to her ever-present insomnia, but the exhaustion is winning out against her anxiety. She thinks about Rhaenyra falling asleep on the other side of the door—wrapping herself up in blankets on a couch she’s only a little too tall for and allowing her eyes to close, her breathing to slowly even out. Alicent falls asleep before she knows it. 

Alicent doesn’t dream that night. 

***

December 15th, 1992

It’s barely seven by the time Alicent finds herself standing beneath the burning spray of the shower. She isn’t sure if Rhaenyra is up, but she’s already called Harrold and told him the two of them won’t be in until later—claiming they’re chasing down a lead that had to be dealt with first thing in the morning. Normally, she’d feel worse about lying, but after the night she’s had, she thinks she’s allowed a moment’s respite. 

The water beats down against her back until her skin is bright red and Alicent leans with her head against the wall. She tries to get the image of the doe out of her mind—the blood slowly seeping from its wound, the way its eyes pleaded for a life it no longer had a claim to. She’d be foolish to assume it hadn’t been a message for them—but if it was, she hates how easily the killer had been able to set a trap for them. How they had known what trails the two of them would follow, that they would lead themselves down the dark and winding wood in the middle of the night, plagued by the ever present curiosity that came with this career. Alicent pounds a fist against the wall—hating herself for being so predictable. Blood streams from her fingernails that she’d been picking at all morning—another old habit coming back to haunt her. 

Alicent finally shuts off the water once she can’t feel her skin anymore, running a brush through her wet hair and resigning herself to fixing it later after deciding she needs a caffeine fix first. Dressing for work, she pushes out into the living room to find Rhaenyra just sitting on the couch. 

“Have you been up very long?” Alicent finds herself asking, walking towards the kitchen. For a moment, she thinks Rhaenyra is going to stay on the couch, but she ends up following her.

“No, no, not long at all, I woke up when I heard the shower,” Rhaenyra hums, leaning against one of the counters as Alicent begins to make coffee for the two of them. Rhaenyra has already changed out of the clothes Alicent lent her and Alicent almost mourns the fact that she didn’t get to see such a thing. “You were… in there a while.”

“I pay my own bills, I’m entitled to be in there as long as I want.” 

“What happened to your hands?” Rhaenyra asks, seemingly cutting off whatever her response was going to be when she catches a glimpse of Alicent’s cuticles. She starts to reach out before abruptly drawing her hands back—Alicent notes the way her hands flex by her side as if it’s a massive effort to resist the urge to touch Alicent. For a moment, Alicent almost wants to reach out—to grab one of her hands and tell her it’s okay. She doesn’t, though. She does not feel as brave now as she did in that coffee shop. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel that brave again. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Alicent retreats inside of herself instead, leaning against the opposite counter with her arms crossed and hands tucked in so Rhaenyra can not feast her eyes upon them yet again. “I told Harrold we’d be in late, but he said a judicial clerk faxed over a warrant for us to speak with the Gould daughters without their father present since our profiling raises ample suspicion or whatever—I don’t know how you pulled that off.”

“Pays to know people,” Rhaenyra shrugs. “Besides my uh—my name kind of allows for a lot of shit to get done.”

“Why would that be?”

Rhaenyra looks down, fiddling with a loose thread on her shirt. “My father may have been the Executive Assistant Director of the criminal branch for… several decades.” 

“And you’re mentioning this now?” Alicent breathes out, her eye twitching slightly. The coffee maker beeps, but Alicent doesn’t move, she just stares at Rhaenyra. “So you’ve used your father’s name to get us a warrant to speak to two minors?”

“With an adult present! We’ll get their aunt or a schoolteacher or something, it’s legal.”

“Rhaenyra!” 

“Look—we both know we need to speak to those girls because they know something that’s going on and I think that’s the reason we’ve been so stuck on this because they’re a huge piece that we’re missing. We can chase florists and dead deer all day, but they know something. At least this way, our interrogation will be valid in a court of law.” 

Alicent simmers, biting the inside of her cheek as she turns around to wash out her two mugs before pouring cups of coffee for both of them. She doesn’t hand Rhaenyra hers, making the woman cross the kitchen to pick it up herself. After a moment, she just shakes her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that’s how you were doing it. I—I need to be able to trust you, Rhaenyra.”

“You can trust me,” Rhaenyra huffs. “Look—my father and I… we didn’t really have the best relationship, okay? I don’t like to talk about him. You of all people should understand that.”

“Don’t bring my father into this,” Alicent shakes her head, gripping the counter with both hands as she faces away from Rhaenyra, staring down into the black abyss of her coffee. “Just—just finish your coffee and go. I’ll see you in the office.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Rhaenyra grits out through her teeth as she dumps her coffee down the sink and leaves the mug there on the counter. She storms out of the kitchen and Alicent winces as the door slams not long after. Alicent curses to herself as soon as she’s gone, running a hand through her wet hair and sighing. She’s had far too little sleep for this—that much is clear as yesterday’s exhaustion creeps beneath her skin. 

She finishes her coffee so quickly it burns her tongue, but she hardly registers the pain. Alicent cleans both mugs out in the sink, staring blankly at the snowy landscape outside her window. There is one thing she should be celebrating, at least—maybe in speaking to these girls, they’ll finally have some fucking answers.