Archive of Our Own

Columbina had a talent for making Sandrone feel seventeen kinds of irritated in under a minute. It was a gift, really.

She’d drift into Sandrone’s desk like a song, all soft footsteps and softer laughter, and then lean over her shoulder just enough for Sandrone to catch the scent of her perfume.

“You’re still studying?” Columbina would murmur, voice dipped in mockery. “You know, if you spent half as much time sleeping as you do glaring at blueprints, you might actually become pleasant.”

Sandrone didn’t look up from the papers in her hands. “And if you spent half as much time minding your business as you do bothering me, this dorm might finally know peace.”

Columbina would laugh like that answer pleased her. It always did. 

Because Columbina didn’t do it to everyone the way she did it to Sandrone. Not exactly. She was warm with everyone, yes. Easy smiles for Rosalyne, quiet little jokes with Arlecchino and Furina, a sweetness around Lumine that was sincere, polite amusement for Lauma and Nefer. 

Columbina was social in the way fire was; everything near her got touched by it eventually.

But with Sandrone, it was different.

With Sandrone, Columbina lingered.

She tugged at threads until they frayed. She smiled as if she knew exactly how badly Sandrone wanted to pull her closer and shake her all at once. She called her ‘dearest’ when she wanted to watch Sandrone’s jaw tighten. 

She would brush invisible dust from Sandrone’s shoulder and then walk away before Sandrone could decide whether to catch her wrist or bite back something reckless.

And sometimes, Columbina would go too far.

“You know,” Columbina said, seated on Sandrone’s worktable, “I adore the way you look at me when you’re angry.”

Sandrone stilled. “What’s this nonsense, Columbina?”

“I’m just saying, I observe you a lot.”

“No. You invent a lot.”

Columbina tipped her head. “Maybe. But you do look at me like you want me to--”

“Finish that sentence,” Sandrone said flatly, “and I’ll have you removed from this dorm.”

Columbina smiled. It didn’t feel bright or playful. It was something smaller. And it felt strange.

For one terrible second, Sandrone thought Columbina might actually finish it.

Thought she might say, kiss you, or keep you, or fuck you, or something equally unbearable.

Instead Columbina slid from the table and stepped away.

“See?” Columbina said lightly. “you’re so easy to provoke.” She pinched Sandrone’s cheek. 

And then she left. Just like that. 

Sandrone stood there with her pulse thudding in her chest and hatred simmering hot and useless under her skin, because this…this was what Columbina did to her. 

She would press close enough to make Sandrone forget how to breathe, open some small dangerous door between them, and then close it before either of them could step right through. 

Hot, then cold. Near, then gone.

It was infuriating, humiliating… and more importantly, it hurt.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Columbina had not meant for it to become cruel. it had been easy, at first. Teasing Sandrone was effortless, like singing was. It was something she did because the response was irresistible. 

Sandrone was composed with everyone else. But with enough pressure, enough insistence, Columbina could make tiny cracks appear.

At times it might look like a sharper inhale, a pause that lasted half a second too long, a look,

Oh, those looks.

If Sandrone had hated her, Columbina thought it would have been easier. 

But what lived in Sandrone’s eyes when Columbina crowded too close, or laughed against her shoulder, or traced an idle finger across the back of her neck…

It was not hatred. It was too hungry for that…and a little too wounded.

And that was exactly why Columbina kept retreating.

Because what if she was wrong?

What if Sandrone’s silence was only tolerance stretched thin? What if Columbina pushed, and pushed, and one day Sandrone finally recoiled for real? What if the thing between them, this brittle, precious thing snapped, and Columbina lost even the right to stand at her side and be annoying?

So she held herself back. She flirted. She made it a joke.

And every time the joke started to become something honest, she stepped back so fast it felt like tearing skin.

It hurt her, too. More than she liked to admit.

Sandrone stared at the closed door and realized with mounting horror that she had nearly ruined herself over a smile.

It was becoming intolerable. Columbina treated boundaries like optional decorations. She entered uninvited, spoke too close, touched too freely, smiled as if she knew precisely what effect she had and enjoyed every second of it. 

Sandrone told herself it was meaningless because Columbina was like that with everyone. Warm with everyone. Curious with everyone. Fond, in her own strange way, with everyone.

But not like this, some disloyal part of Sandrone argued. Not exactly quite like this.

Not unless Sandrone was a fool inventing distinctions to justify the way her heart tripped every time Columbina entered a room.

That possibility… or her own foolishness, made her angrier than anything else.

Because if Columbina meant nothing by it, then Sandrone was being made ridiculous.

If Columbina did mean something by it, then this endless cycle without resolution was far worse.

Looking at it either way, Sandrone has already lost.

So she had stopped trying to understand Columbina a long time ago.

Because what else was she supposed to feel when Columbina would lean too close, voice soft and teasing in her ear one moment, then turn around and laugh just as easily with someone else the next?

It was exhausting, if she was being honest. 

So Sandrone kept her distance. Or at least, she tried to.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Columbina grew crueler whenever she was scared. It was never intentional. Never in the cold, deliberate sense. It was more instinctive than that. 

The closer she came to saying something true, the more she needed to hide behind lies.

So when Sandrone avoided her for two days, Columbina cornered her in a hallway. 

“My, my,” she said, folding her hands behind her back as Sandrone tried to pass. “Have I upset you?”

Sandrone did not stop walking. “Don’t overestimate your significance.”

“Ouch.”

“Move out of my way, Columbina!”

Instead of moving, Columbina stepped neatly into her path. “You haven’t looked at me once all morning.”

Sandrone’s eyes flashed. “Would you like applause for noticing?”

“No…I’d like to know why.”

“What an unusual concept,” Sandrone said. “You wanting to know why someone feels something.”

Columbina’s smile faltered. Only for a second. But Sandrone saw it, nonetheless. 

Sandrone had already gone too far to stop. The hurt had been sitting in her chest for days, hardening into something bitter.

“You push and pull like a child testing a leash,” she said, voice low. “If you want attention so badly, there are easier ways to get it.”

Columbina went still.

There were only two outcomes now, Sandrone thought. Columbina would either turn it all into some airy joke and float away untouched, or…

Or she would finally say something honest.

For one impossible second Sandrone thought it might be the second.

Columbina looked at her with a naked hurt that made Sandrone’s own stomach twist in warning. Then the expression vanished under a light laugh.

“Oh, Sandrone,” she said fondly. “If I wanted attention, I could get it from someone much less difficult.”

That was the joke. The exit. The blade slid in.

Sandrone stepped aside at once. “Then by all means.”

Columbina inclined her head and walked past. She held her spine straight until she turned the corner.

Then she kept walking because if she stopped, even for a moment, she thought she might do something humiliating. Like cry. Or turn back. Or tell Sandrone the truth and watch it destroy everything.

On the other side of the corridor, alone at last, Columbina pressed her fist to her mouth and hated herself for not being braver.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in the hall, Sandrone remained standing exactly where she was, face bloodless with anger.

Someone much less difficult.

Of course, Columbina could say things like that so easily. Of course she could turn Sandrone inside out and then remind her that none of it mattered.

Sandrone told herself she would stop caring. It was a lie. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What made it worse was that nothing had changed. Columbina really was still too friendly with everyone.

That should not have mattered. Sandrone despised possessiveness in all its vulgar forms. She had no claim on Columbina, no right to resent the easy affection she scattered around everywhere. 

Yet resentment came anyway.

It came when Columbina laughed against Rosalyne’s shoulder at some cutting remark and left her hand there a beat too long.

It came when Furina threw herself dramatically against Columbina’s side and Columbina, smiling, held her waist like the gesture belonged there.

It came when Lumine asked Columbina for help with some trivial nonsense and Columbina said, “Anything for you,” in the same teasing tone she used on Sandrone.

Anything for you.

Sandrone nearly cracked the stem of her glass.

Arlecchino noticed “You look murderous,” she said without looking up from her drink.

Sandrone kept her gaze fixed ahead. “Then don’t provoke me.”

“I didn’t.” A pause. “Columbina did.”

That made Sandrone turn. 

Arlecchino met her eyes “She does that,” Arlecchino said. “The question is whether she knows what she’s doing.”

Sandrone let out a short, mirthless laugh. “Oh she knows exactly what she’s doing.”

“Maybe.” Arlecchino swirled the drink in her glass. “Or maybe she knows only half of it, which makes you…not entirely innocent.”

Sandrone hated that answer because it sounded too plausible. She hated it more because it gave Columbina the benefit of the doubt.

And Sandrone was no longer in a generous mood.

“If she’s upset, then she only has herself to blame.” Sandrone said with a huff. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Columbina did notice Sandrone watching her with other people.

At first it had been accidental, then curious, then addictive in the ugliest way. If Sandrone would not reach for her, then Columbina could at least make her look. 

A hand at Rosalyne’s elbow. A smile saved too long for Lumine. An affectionate lean into Furina’s dramatics. Every time Sandrone’s expression tightened, Columbina felt a little flare of satisfaction.

See me, she thought. Care about me. Want something ugly enough that I don’t have to be the only one ashamed of it.

Then Sandrone would go distant instead of jealous, cold instead of possessive, and the satisfaction curdled immediately into grief.

After a gathering had thinned and the hallways were quieter, Columbina found Sandrone alone on a balcony, staring out into the dark.

She should have left. Instead she drifted to the railing beside Sandrone and said, “You left early.”

“Unlike you,” Sandrone said, “I don’t require an audience.”

That should have warned her off. Instead Columbina leaned on the stone rail and looked sideways at her. “You make it sound as though I was performing.”

“Aren’t you always?” 

Columbina smiled by habit. “Only for select company.”

Sandrone’s jaw tightened. “I’m not interested in being part of your collection.”

There was ache under the anger, that awful sense that Sandrone thought herself as one of many.

Columbina’s chest tightened. “You think so little of me?”

Sandrone finally looked at her. “I think very little of anyone who toys with someone else’s feelings”

The playful expression slipped entirely from Columbina’s face. For a moment she simply looked tired. 

“I’m not toying with anyone,” she said quietly.

Sandrone’s own voice dropped in answer. “Then stop making it look like a game.”

Columbina could have said it then. She could have said: 

Because if I let it stop being a game, I will want things from you I don’t know how to survive not having.

Instead she stepped back. Actually stepped back. Physically retreating one pace like the truth itself had advanced too far.

Sandrone saw that. The look on her shuttered and wounded face. It was so awful that Columbina had to grip the railing behind her back to keep herself from reaching out.

“Yes, see?” Sandrone said after a long silence. “That’s what I thought.”

She left before Columbina could answer.

That was the night Columbina finally admitted to herself that she was not merely afraid…

She was in love.

And she was making it unbearable for both of them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Holding back became harder because the feelings themselves were no longer deniable.

She knew now why every room felt altered when Sandrone entered it. Why every sharp reply sounded like flirtation in a language only the two of them spoke. 

Why Sandrone’s rare, unwilling smiles felt like private miracles. Why it hurts so much to be misread.

She also knew she had earned the misreading.

It was not a simple tragedy. There was no clean villainy in it, no noble suffering untainted by her own mistakes. Columbina had created half the problem with her own hands, and the other half with her silence.

So she tried, in small ridiculous ways, to be gentler.

She stopped touching quite so casually. She knocked before entering Sandrone’s dormroom. She kept her jokes lighter, less pointed and less intimate.

Sandrone noticed this too.

And of course, she mistook it.

Where once Columbina had been all warmth and provocation, now she was careful and polite.. 

She stood farther away. She did not perch on the worktable. She no longer leaned close enough to steal Sandrone’s attention from whatever she was doing.

It should have been a relief. Instead it felt like withdrawal. Like being starved after living too long on crumbs.

A week into Columbina’s restraint, Sandrone was ready to tear apart something expensive.

Columbina appeared in the doorway of her room with tea. Like some courteous acquaintance.

“I thought you’d forgotten to eat again,” she said.

Sandrone looked up from the machine in front of her and saw Columbina standing there at a perfectly respectable distance, expression soft and unreadable.

It made something inside her snap.

“How considerate.”

Columbina paused. “Is that accusation or gratitude?”

“Whichever annoys you more.” A flash of hurt. Hidden quickly.

Columbina crossed the room, set the cup down beside Sandrone’s papers, and turned to leave.

“Is that all?” Sandrone asked.

Columbina’s hand stilled on the edge of the table. “What else should there be?”

Sandrone laughed brittle and ugly. “I don’t know. A remark designed to make me lose my train of thought? An invasion of my space? Some charming little cruelty disguised as affection?”

Columbina turned slowly. “That’s what you want?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want, Sandrone?” The question was too direct. Sandrone hated it instantly.

“I want,” she said, rising to her feet before she could stop herself, “for you to decide whether I am a game to you or not.”

Columbina’s face went terribly still.

And then…God, she looked hurt. It made Sandrone realize too late that she had struck somewhere unguarded.

But Sandrone could not seem to stop.

“You don’t get to alternate between setting me on fire and acting as though we are strangers,” she said. “If you’re that bored, find someone else to torment!”

Columbina drew in a careful breath. “You think I’m…bored.”

“I think you like being wanted.”

Something raw flickered over Columbina’s expression. “you think that is all this is?”

Sandrone opened her mouth. Then closed it.

Because there was an answer there, honest and humiliating: No. I think if it were only that, it wouldn’t hurt this much.

Columbina waited. But Sandrone said nothing. The pause stretched so long it became its own answer.

Columbina looked down once, as if gathering up the remains of something fragile from the floor.

Sandrone should have gotten up then. She should have walked away. Instead she stayed, because leaving would have felt too much like surrender.

Columbina plucked at the cuff of Sandrone’s sleeve. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually cared about me.”

Something dangerous flashed hot under Sandrone’s chest. “And if I didn’t know better,” she said tightly, “I’d think you enjoyed being cruel.”

For one brief second, Columbina’s expression changed. The teasing dropped away. Something wounded flickered in its place.

Then, just as quickly, she smiled again, smaller and careful. 

“I brought you tea,” she said in a voice so calm it hurt to hear. “That’s all this was.”

“I should go,” Columbina added.

“Of course, you should.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“No,” Sandrone snapped, “what isn’t fair is you making me feel like I’ve lost my damn mind!”

Columbina flinched as though struck. For one awful heartbeat she looked stricken. Then she smiled that small, distant smile again.

“Goodnight, Sandrone.”

And she left. The door clicked shut behind her.

Sandrone was alone with the sick certainty that she had just watched Columbina choose distance over honesty yet again.

What she did not know--what she could not know--was that Columbina had fled because for one dangerous second she had wanted to cross the room, take Sandrone by the face, and say 

yes, yes, yes, it is you, it has always been you, and I’m terrified of what that means.

But Columbina was already turning away, greeting another girl across the courtyard with effortless warmth, as if nothing had happened. 

As if she had not just pressed on Sandrone’s sorest bruise just to watch her flinch.

Sandrone sat frozen on the bench, book clenched in her lap, jealousy rising in her so violently it made her nauseous.

She hated that Columbina could do this to her--come close enough to be felt, then vanish before she could be held accountable for any of it.

She hated that she still watched her go.

Sandrone stayed motionless for several seconds after, trying to steady her breathing, staring at the untouched cup beside her.

When she finally picked it up, it had already gone lukewarm.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sandrone lay awake staring at the underside of the bed above her. Her jaw was clenched and her chest was still aching.

Across the room, Columbina laughed quietly at something one of the other girls had said. It was only a little laugh, barely even anything, but it still cut through the silence.

Sandrone turned onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut.

It should not matter. Columbina had friends. Everyone had friends. It was normal. It was healthy. It should not hurt every time Columbina offered somebody else the attention she so desperately, shamefully hoarded.

And yet. Every bright easy word Columbina gave to someone else felt stolen.

Because with Sandrone, nothing was ever easy.

With Sandrone, Columbina looked at her as though she could see all the hidden, unsanctified parts of her, then stepped away the moment Sandrone began to believe it meant something. 

With everyone else, she was simply kind, open and safe. With Sandrone, she was a spark held too close to a dry kindling.

Sandrone pressed her hand to her eyes. Her throat hurt. She heard Columbina say goodnight. Heard the rustle of blankets. Then the silence settled.

Only then did Sandrone let herself cry.

Just enough that the pillow beneath her cheek grew damp, and her breaths came thin and uneven with frustration.

She envied everyone. The girls who could make Columbina laugh without suffering for it. The ones who could throw an arm around her in the daylight and feel nothing twist inside them afterward. The ones who weren’t caught in that narrow place between wanting and fearing, between aching for more…

and hearing that single word--wrong--strike through the center of their mind like a bell.

She envied the Columbina the others knew: warm, easy and effortlessly kind.

Sandrone got the temperature shifts. The fleeting private smiles. The lure, and then the pullback.

She got almost. 

And almost was its own cruelty, because it is never enough.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The chapel always smelled faintly of candle wax and old wood, like something preserved too long in prayer. Sandrone liked it best when it was empty.

Silence meant she did not have to hear Columbina laughing somewhere down the corridor with other girls, bright and effortless, as if affection came naturally to her. 

As if she did not leave wreckage behind her every time she touched someone’s sleeve, leaned too close to whisper, or smiled like she was sharing a secret meant only for the other to hear.

Sandrone knelt in the third pew from the front, her hands clasped too tightly, as she stared up at the crucifix with dry, stinging eyes.

She forced her eyes shut and tried to pray properly.

“Lord, grant me-“ Nothing came.

What she wanted was not: grant me patience, or grant me strength, or grant me purity of mind.

What she wanted was crueler than that.

Take it away, she thought. Please.

But even in prayer, she could not bring herself to say Columbina’s name like it was something to be cut out of her.

She bowed her head lower.

“Dear God, please take this feeling away,” Sandrone whispered instead, voice trembling in the hush of the chapel. 

“Or tell me what to do with it, because I don’t know. I don’t know what this is supposed to be if it makes me feel sick all the time.”

Her throat tightened.

“I try to be good. I try not to look at her too long. I try not to think about her when I wake up, or when I’m trying to sleep, or when she smiles at someone else and I--”

Her breath hitched sharply.

“I hate it,” she said, and the truth burned the moment it left her mouth. “I hate how much it matters to me. I hate how she can ruin my whole day by laughing with another girl. I hate how happy I am when she sits right next to me. I hate--”

Sandrone pressed a fist to her mouth. The stained-glass saints above her looked down in jewel-toned silence.

“No. I--I don’t hate her,” she whispered brokenly. “That's the problem.” 

Her eyes filled with tears despite herself.

“She makes everything feel worse. And better. And I think that must mean something is wrong with me, because it should not feel like this. It should not hurt this much just because she touched my hand in the library, or because she called me dearest like it was a joke, or because she looks at everyone the same way she looks at me, and I still--”

A tear slipped down her cheek.

“…I still want it to mean something.”

The chapel swallowed the confession whole. 

Sandrone stayed there long after the candles had burned lower, crying as quietly as she could, shoulders shaking once, then again, as if grief had found a seam in her and was gently pulling her apart.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the time confession day came around, both of them were half-haunted.

The girls lined up outside the confessional in their uniforms, heads bowed with varying degrees of sincerity. 

Some whispered prayers. Some were clearly inventing sins dramatic enough to be interesting but mild enough to remain forgivable.

Sandrone waited with her arms folded too tightly. Columbina stood several places ahead, lashes lowered, looking almost bored--or half-asleep.

Their eyes met once. Columbina looked away first. The small, stupid sting of it lodged under Sandrone’s chest.

When her turn came, she entered the confessional with a dry mouth and shaking hands.

The screen between her and the priest made everything worse. Safer, perhaps. But worse.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said automatically. “It has been two weeks since my last confession.”

The priest murmured the expected response. Sandrone stared at the dark wood paneling and found it hard to breathe.

“Well?” he prompted gently.

Sandrone swallowed. “There is someone,” she said.

“I…” Her hands twisted in her lap. “I think I have been uncharitable.”

“In what way?”

That almost made her laugh. In every way that mattered.

“There is someone I care about,” she said, “and it’s turning me into someone I don’t like.”

Father Benedetto’s tone remained kind. “How so?”

“I think ugly thoughts,” Sandrone said. “Not about them. About everyone else. Every person they smile at. Every person they touch casually. Every person who gets from them what I…” Her voice faltered. 

“What I want.”

“I’m jealous,” she whispered. “Often bitter and distracted. I think terrible things when they speak to other people. But it’s nothing violent!” she added quickly, feeling mortified. 

“Just…petty things. Ugly things. I resent their kindness to others because…I want it all for myself.”

The priest was quiet. Sandrone pressed on because stopping would mean thinking.

“They’re kind to everyone. And I know that should be a virtue. I know I should admire it. Instead I resent it. I resent that I can’t have all of their attention. I resent that they can make me feel chosen one moment and invisible the next.”

“You say they make you feel chosen.” the priest said gently.

Sandrone laughed bitterly. “Perhaps that’s vanity speaking. Or my delusion, but yes.”

“Go on.”

“They drew close,” Sandrone whispered. “say things they could deny later. Look at me in ways I can’t stop thinking about. And when I respond--when I let myself believe there might be something real there--they pull away. Suddenly I imagined it all. Suddenly I’m a fool.”

Her throat burned.

“And I pray for this to end, but it never does. I try to be disciplined. I try to avoid vanity, indulgence, and selfishness. But loving someone feels like being skinned alive, Father. It hurts...”

“...It hurts all the time.”

There was a very long silence on the other side of the screen. Then, carefully: 

“Loving someone is not sinful in itself, my dear.”

Sandrone’s throat closed. “What if it is?” she asked.

Another pause. Slower now and more cautious. “Why do you believe it is?”

Because she is a girl, Sandrone thought, but saying it aloud felt like stepping off a roof.

“What if it’s the wrong kind?” She whispered instead, barely clothed and indirect.

“They can’t love me back,” Sandrone added in defeat, her voice shaking. “And even if they could…it would still be wrong.”

The priest inhaled sharply.  Sandrone squeezed her eyes shut. There. It was as good as said.

“I don’t know how to stop,” she whispered. “And I don’t know what kind of person it makes me that I don’t want to.”

The shock on the other side of the screen was not visible, exactly, but it was palpable. The air had gone abruptly thick.

When the priest finally spoke, his voice had lost some of its smooth certainty.

“You are young,” he said, as if reaching for stable ground. “Strong feelings can be confusing. One must be cautious not to mistake intensity for truth.”

Sandrone laughed softly and miserably. “That’s the problem, Father. It feels truer than anything.”

Father Benedetto spoke gently. “Strong attachment can be confusing, especially at your age.”

Sandrone shut her eyes. “It’s more than just attachment.”

The priest said nothing, and the confessional suddenly felt very small.

“I… I love her!” Sandrone confessed after a beat.

The words seemed to alter the air.

“I love her, Father. I can barely pray. I can barely sleep. and I can’t help but think there’s something…terribly wrong with me.” 

Sandrone’s voice was small. It breaks with every pain and tear she’s welling up inside. 

She let out a shaky breath and kept going before courage abandoned her.

“What if I can’t say it plainly because saying it plainly makes it uglier? What if I know there’s no future in it, no goodness in it, and I still can’t make myself want less? What if being near her feels like grace and punishment at the same time?”

The priest did not answer immediately. When he did, some of the steadiness had gone out of him.

“You are speaking of another girl. Child.” 

Sandrone felt humiliation blaze through her so hot she nearly stood up and fled. “Yes.”

Father Benedetto cleared his throat. “You are young.”

Sandrone almost laughed. It was such a useless sentence.

“These feelings may be…confusion. Intensity misread as affection. Or misplaced emotional dependency.”

“They are not misplaced!” The words of protest left her before she could stop them.

Sandrone pressed her forehead briefly to her clasped hands.

“That’s…that’s what scares me,” she whispered. “It doesn’t feel misplaced at all! It feels truer than anything else in my life right now! and if that’s wrong then…what does that say about me? What does that make me?”

She braced herself for a reprimand, a scripture, or a warning.

Instead Father Benedetto sounded, for the first time in his vocation perhaps, a little shaken.

“It makes you someone who is in pain,” he said.

The gentleness of the answer nearly undid her more than condemnation would have.

Sandrone swallowed hard.

“Father, I don’t know how to stop loving her.”

Behind the screen, the priest was silent again. 

Finally he offered counsel about guarding the heart, avoiding occasions of distress, keeping close to prayer. His phrases were correct, compassionate enough– but they slid right off the wound without closing it.

He assigned penance. 

Sandrone accepted it. She rose from her seat, feeling numb, and left the confessional without feeling any cleaner.

As she stepped out, Columbina looked up from the pew where she was waiting next.

Their eyes met.

Sandrone moved past her without a word.

Columbina went in with dread coiling cold in her stomach.

Sandrone left with a penance and no peace at all.

And If she had looked back before reaching the chapel doors, she might have seen Columbina's hands were trembling.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inside the confessional, Columbina folded herself small on the kneeler and smiled reflexively into the dark, as if charm might save her. It didn’t.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been…” She hesitated. “long enough.”

The priest gave a weary murmur of encouragement.

Columbina clasped her hands. Unclasped them. Then tried again.

“I’ve been having…thoughts,” she said at last.

“Thoughts?”

“Awful ones.”

The priest sounded almost relieved. This, at least, was familiar ground. “Temptations are not the same as sins, child. It is the indulgence of temptation that endangers the soul.”

“Yes,” Columbina said faintly. “I was afraid you might say that, it’s unfortunate, because mine feel rather intentional.”

Columbina took a breath that trembled on the way out. 

“There is a girl,” she said.“I have behaved badly towards her.”

“In what way?”

Columbina smiled without humor. “In ways subtle enough to excuse and cruel enough to hurt.”

No reply came from behind the screen.

She drew a slow breath. “I provoke her on purpose.”

“Why?”

Because I’m weak, she thought. Because I’m vain. Because anger is easier to read than tenderness, and safer to receive.

Aloud, she said, “Because when she reacts, I know I matter.”

“That is manipulative, child.”

“Yes.”

The admission came easily. It had lived in her for months.

“I tease her. I draw near. I say things that mean more than I can bear to admit. And when she begins to believe me, I retreat.” Her fingers tightened together. 

“I make her feel unstable, I think. Doubtful of her own reading of me. And I tell myself I’m being cautious, when in truth I’m only being a coward.”

Columbina’s throat tightened. But she went on. 

“I’m jealous too,” she said more quietly. “Not the way she is. less obvious, perhaps. But no less ugly. I want her eyes on me all the time. When she turns away from me, It feels as though my heart is being ripped apart. So I do things just to get a reaction. Any reaction. Even anger.”

“That is unkind, my child”

“Yes.” Columbina looked down. “I know.”

The priest shifted faintly behind the screen.

“I think about her constantly. I want her attention more than I should. and then when I get too close to proving what I’m afraid of, I step back--because if I’m wrong, I’m afraid I will lose her”

“...and I think it will destroy me.”

The priest said nothing. And Columbina, once started, she could not stop.

“I think about her face when she’s angry,” Columbina whispered. “I think about what it would be like if she ever looked at me gently for once.” Her voice grew smaller. 

“I think about holding her hand where no one can see. I think about brushing the hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear. I think about resting my head on her shoulder during bible study and not having to pretend it means nothing.” 

Her breath shook. 

“I think about kissing her, sometimes.”

“and…” she whispered, shame finally catching up to her, “I think of more than that. I think of things I shouldn’t do. I want closeness, I don’t know if I’m allowed to want. I think of her in ways that make me feel sick afterward, because she is my friend and because she is--”

She could not bring herself to finish.

The priest was so silent that for one horrifying moment Columbina wondered if he had simply ceased to exist.

“I think of her constantly. In the morning, before I even get up. At night, when I should be praying. Sometimes in prayer.” Her fingers tightened against the rosary wrapped around her wrist. 

“I think of her at night, especially.”

“And I feel guilty for thinking of her this way. Guilty because she is my friend. Guilty because she is a girl. Guilty because part of me still doesn’t know if love like this is real or only a defect in me. Guilty because even if it is real, I still want things I have no right to want.”

The priest cleared his throat softly. “Temptation is not the same as surrender.”

“No,” Columbina said. “But I have surrendered in my heart a hundred times.”

A faint rustle came from the other side of the screen. She imagined him straightening, already uneasy, already sensing the direction of her confession and wishing he did not.

“She is proud,” Columbina went on, and there was something helplessly tender in her voice now, something worse than desire because it refused to remain only that. 

“Cold when she wants to be. And I...” Her breath trembled. “Father, I look at her and I want to be the one thing that undoes her.”

The priest said nothing.

“I want to take all that attitude and watch it fail with me” she whispered. “Not to break her. God help me, never that. I want to be gentle enough that she cannot defend herself against it. I want her to go soft with me. I want her to trust me with the parts of herself she hides from everyone else. I want her cruel mouth to lose all its sharpness when it says my name.”

“child,” the priest said, strained now, “you must stop.”

But Columbina only bowed her head further, as though shame itself were pinning her in place.

“I think about how gentle she could be if she ever stopped defending herself from me. I think about what it would feel like if she looked at me the way I secretly want her to. I think about closeness that’s not permitted to have a name here.”

“I notice everything,” she confessed. “The line of her throat when she laughs. The way her anger flashes so bright. I think of touching her face and feeling all that pride go fragile beneath my hands. I think about holding her so close there is no room left for pretense. I think about hearing her voice break…from wanting to be known and not being able to bear how much she wants it.”

A sharp sound came from the other side--whether a startled breath or the priest shifting back from the screen, even Columbina could not tell.

“Enough,” he said, and this time the word came out like an alarm.

Her laugh was soft and bitter. “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

The priest's voice hardened, as though severity might rescue him. “These thoughts are impure.”

“Yes. Father”

“Disordered.”

“Yes.”

“Sinful.”

At that, Columbina finally looked up, her expression unseen but palpable in the dark: grief-stricken and yearning, almost reverent in its misery.

“I--yes,” she said again. “That’s why I brought them here.”

“I want…” She stopped, and when she began again her voice sounded into something more intimate and wounded. 

“I want to kiss the anger out of her. I want to strip every cruel little smile down to the truth beneath it. I want to touch every hidden part of her and make her feel cherished there--exposed there--helpless there. I want her trembling not because of fear, but because she can no longer pretend she doesn’t want me too.”

The priest made a noise of genuine distress. “My child--”

“And that’s not even the worst of all,” Columbina whispered.

He fell silent.

“The worst of all is that sometimes I no longer know where desire ends and worship begins. I have wanted, so badly, to make her forget every righteous word she has ever spoken and replace it with my name…only mine.”

The words landed with the weight of blasphemy.

For several long seconds, the priest did not speak. When he finally did, all his composure had thinned.

“You speak as though you would make an idol of her.”

Columbina closed her eyes. Guilt crowded so tightly into her chest it was hard to breathe.

“I already have.”

The priest inhaled sharply, audibly mortified. “You must repent.”

“I know.”

“You must mortify the flesh. You must turn your thoughts toward God.”

A tiny smile, ruined at the edges, touched her mouth.

“I have tried, Father. But every hymn becomes her voice. Every image of ecstasy wears her face. I kneel to pray and think only of what it would be to have her kneel for me--not in humiliation, but in trust so complete it feels like sacrilege.”

“Stop,” the priest said, almost pleading now.

Columbina pressed trembling fingers to her lips.

“I’m ashamed every hour of it,” she said. “Ashamed that I want her tenderness, ashamed that I want her weakness, ashamed that if she ever came to me with that guarded heart laid open, I don’t know whether I would comfort her or ruin her myself.”

The priest sounded as if he had gone pale. “This confession is not meant for…fantasies.”

“No,” Columbina said. “It is meant for sins.”

That left him with nothing to say.

The silence stretched long enough to become its own kind of judgment. Columbina breathed through it, unsteady and almost prayerful, as if each breath scraped against her ribs on the way out.

At last the priest asked, in a voice brittle with disbelief, “Do you repent of this?”

Columbina’s answer came small and terrifyingly honest.

“I repent that it is sinful,” she said. “But…”

“I do not repent that it is her.”

On the other side of the screen, the priest recoiled abruptly and the wood gave a protesting creak.

“God preserve us,” he murmured.

Columbina let out a broken laugh, half sorrow and half longing.

“That,” she said softly, “was what I was afraid of.”

When he spoke again, it was a poorly concealed alarm. “This girl…she is another student?”

Columbina gave a helpless little laugh. “Well. It would be worse if she weren’t, wouldn’t it?”

“Child.” That single word only made her want to cry.

“I know,” Columbina whispered. “Please, help me. that’s why I’m here.”

There was a rustle behind the screen, as though the priest had shifted in deep discomfort.

“Have you acted on these thoughts?”

“No,” Columbina said, and that was mostly true.

Not beyond the touches that lingered too long. The smiles weighted with too much meaning. The constant testing of the wire stretched between them.

“Do you intend to?”

Columbina thought of Sandrone’s face. Hurt, furious, almost hopeful. She gave herself a moment to think.

Sandrone…I don’t know what to do. If I stay close, I tempt us both. If I pull away, I hurt you. If I speak honestly, I may lose you. If I don’t, I will lose you anyway because no one survives being half-loved.

“No,” she said instead, and hated how much it hurt to answer. “I intend to keep ruining everything by saying almost enough and then pretending I meant nothing at all.” 

The priest, clearly out of his depth, cleared his throat. “You must create distance where temptation thrives.”

Columbina smiled sadly. “That seems wise,” she said. “and unbearable.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Distance, it turned out, was the remedy Columbina chose next.

She began with small things, which somehow hurt worst of all. She stopped sitting close enough for their skirts to brush beneath the desk. Stopped catching lightly at Sandrone’s sleeve to get her attention, stopped leaning over her shoulder to read from the same page, stopped letting her voice slip into that softness that had once made everything else in the room fall away. She became guarded and impeccably kind.

Sandrone would have preferred open cruelty. Cruelty, at least, had heat. It meant something between them was still alive enough to wound.

At breakfast, Columbina asked for the jam in the same pleasant tone she used with everyone else. No hidden smile. No sidelong glance. No brush of fingers lingering one second longer than necessary. 

Just, “Could you pass that, please?” as though Sandrone were any other girl.

In class, she spoke to her only when necessary. If Sandrone answered a question, Columbina didn’t look at her. If they were made to work beside each other, Columbina’s hands stayed neatly folded in her lap or occupied with her books, as though she no longer trusted them near temptation.

In the hallways, she still smiled--but carefully now, its gentleness felt so restrained. A smile that seemed to say, I am protecting us, while killing the only thing either of them had ever dared not name.

And because they had never learned how to speak honestly to each other--because both of them were too proud to confess weakness, too frightened to risk the truth, too poisoned by shame to call longing by its proper name–

Sandrone took Columbina’s withdrawal as confirmation.

Confirmation that she had imagined it all: every glance held one beat too long, every private softness, every almost-confession hidden in teasing words and retreating smiles. 

She had built a cathedral out of crumbs and called it revelation.

Or worse--far worse--that Columbina had known exactly what she was doing. That she had seen Sandrone hoping, had watched her come alive beneath every scrap of attention, and found some private amusement in drawing her in…only to let her starve.

By the end of the week, Sandrone felt frayed raw.

Everything in her seemed tender. The sound of Columbina’s voice elsewhere in the room made her stomach knot. The sight of her laughing with other girls left behind a sour ache. 

She slept badly, prayed worse, and carried herself with a composure of someone trying not to come apart in public.

She had once thought almost was the cruelest thing.

But this was far worse.

Because almost had at least contained hope.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That night, Sandrone went back to the chapel alone.

She was supposed to be doing her penance. Instead she found herself standing before the altar with too much feeling in her chest and nowhere for any of it to go.

The chapel was dim, lit only by a scatter of candles. Saints watched from stained glass and stone with that same unreadable patience holy things always seemed to wear.

Sandrone did not kneel at first. She stood at the end of the aisle, staring at the altar with red-rimmed eyes and anger sat sharp on her chest.

Then the words tore out of her all at once.

“I did what You wanted,” she whispered.

“I tried,” she said again, and this time there was something desperate in it. “I really tried.”

“I tried to be normal. I tried to be disciplined. I tried to want ordinary things--safe things, correct things.” Her mouth twisted sharply. “I told myself it would pass if I ignored it long enough. If I prayed hard enough. If I punished myself quietly enough. If I swallowed it down deep enough that no one could see it.”

Her throat tightened.

“I buried it until I could hardly breathe, and still…” Her voice wavered. “You didn’t take it from me.”

She dropped to her knees, the wood biting through her stockings.

“So what am I supposed to do?” she demanded. “Tell me! If this is a test, I’m failing it. If it’s punishment, I don’t even know what I did.”

Tears burned hot behind her eyes.

“I don’t understand why You would let someone feel this much for a person they can’t have.”

The first tear slipped free. Then another.

“I—I love her,” she said, and even alone in the dark it felt like saying something dangerous. 

“I love her, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t even know if I want to stop. I don’t know whether losing this would make me feel better...or only emptier.”

By then the tears were spilling in earnest, sliding hot down her face. She scrubbed at them angrily, but more kept coming.

“She makes me miserable,” Sandrone whispered. “She makes me selfish. She makes me want things I cannot ask for, cannot name, cannot even pray for without feeling ashamed.” Her breath hitched. 

“She makes me feel seen in ways that frighten me. She makes me feel as if every hidden part of me has been laid bare, and I hate it--I hate how much I want it! and I keep coming back for more anyway.”

Her shoulders trembled. The chapel remained silent around her, as if it were listening.

“And if this is wrong,” she said, the words breaking open as they left her, 

“if I’m wrong, then why does it feel like the most honest thing in me?”

She bowed her head lower, until her forehead nearly touched her clasped hands.

“Why does it feel more true than anything else I’ve ever prayed for?”

The candles flickered, their thin flames bending in the draft like they, too, could not hold still beneath the weight of what had been said.

Sandrone lifted her face only enough to look at the altar through tears already blurring her vision.

“She’s not mine. She was never mine. And still I’m jealous. Still I’m bitter. Still I want all her attention like a child. I hate how petty it makes me. I hate how weak I become around her. I hate how I feel holy and ruined at the same time.” 

Her voice shook harder with every word. The admission seemed to hollow something out inside her.

“And I don’t even know whether to ask You to take it from me anymore.”

That truth struck her silent for a moment. It startled her even now, hearing it spoken aloud. She stared at the altar as if it might flinch.

“Because if You take this away,” she said, barely more than breath, “then what is left in me that’s honest?”

The question rang softly through the chapel and disappeared into the rafters unanswered.

Sandrone folded in on herself then, bowing low as the tears came harder. Her shoulders shook beneath unsteady candlelight. Every breath scraped out of her unevenly, as if grief had lodged somewhere sharp in her chest.

“She hurts me,” she whispered. “And I hurt her. We keep hurting each other because we’re too frightened to say what we mean.” Her voice broke. “And the worst part is that if she looked at me the right way--even once--I think I would forgive her for everything.”

Her hands tightened against the wood until her fingers ached.

“I don’t want to be disgusting,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be damned for this. I don’t want her to hate me.” Her face crumpled. “But I can’t keep pretending I feel nothing, because I feel everything. It’s too much…It hurts too much!”

“I don’t want to wake up ten years from now and realize I mistook loneliness for love,” she whispered. “But if this is only loneliness, then why does it feel like devotion? Why does it feel like truth? Why does it feel closer to prayer than anything else I know how to name?”

After that, whatever composure she had left gave way completely.

Her crying filled the chapel. It sounded of someone who had spent too long starving herself of tenderness and calling it virtue. 

It echoed faintly off the walls, shameful only because no one had ever taught her how grief was supposed to sound when it was real.

By the end of it, her voice thinned to something frayed.

“I’m tired,” she whispered. “Please. I’m so tired.”

The silence that followed was not an answer. But neither was it condemnation. For the first time all evening, it seemed large enough to hold her grief without trying to name it anything else.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gathering that set everything ablaze began because Furina was bored. That, in retrospect, should have warned all of them.

Lumine had somehow acquired several bottles of something expensive and strong, and declared that what they needed was a lighthearted evening--which, in this particular circle, usually meant an event destined to end in emotional bloodshed, property damage, or both.

Arlecchino arrived wearing the expression of someone already disappointed in everyone present. Rosalyne came late and unapologetic. Lauma and Nefer claimed the corner seat together and observed the rest of them with unreadable amusement.

Sandrone had nearly refused the invitation.

In the end, she came only because declining would have looked too pointed, and she’s tired of pretending not to be pointed. Besides, she told herself, Columbina would be there, and perhaps if enough people filled the room--then the strain of ignoring each other might thin into something manageable.

This was, predictably, a lie.

Columbina arrived late in a pale silk dress. The first thing Sandrone noticed, though, was not the silk. It was the shadows beneath her eyes--faintly bruised, impossible to hide. 

She had been crying too much lately. It seemed, these days, that all Columbina did was hurt quietly and pretend she hadn’t.

Columbina was hurting, especially on nights like this one, when they were all drinking together and Sandrone was across the room, beautiful and distant and already refusing to look at her. 

Sandrone knew the exact moment she entered without even looking up. The room changed around her. Conversations tilted. Even Furina’s voice rose bright with delight as she greeted her.

By the time Sandrone finally lifted her head, Columbina was already surrounded--smiling at someone, laughing softly at something and nowhere near her.

Later, when Columbina risked a glance in her direction, Sandrone was staring into her drink with the expression of someone trying very hard not to commit arson in a furnished room.

Good, some mean, injured part of Columbina thought.

Then immediately after: No. Not good. Never good.

That was the rhythm of them now. Hurt, then regret. Reach, then retreat. Hunger followed by shame so quickly it nearly passed for virtue.

Rosalyne, perceptive devil that she was, lasted perhaps half an hour before setting down her glass and saying, “This is unbearable.”

Furina looked up at once. “What is?”

“You two,” Rosalyne said, gesturing lazily between Sandrone and Columbina. “I’ve seen hostage situations with better chemistry.”

Lumane nearly choked laughing.

“We do not have chemistry,” Sandrone said flatly.

“At all,” Columbina said at the exact same moment.

The room fell silent for one deadly beat.

Then Arlecchino leaned back in her chair and said, with absolute contempt, “Pathetic.”

Furina pointed at them in delight. “There! You see? That’s exactly the sort of synchronized denial people do before making dumb romantic decisions.”

“We’re not making any decisions, and we’re certainly not romantic!” Sandrone said.

“Speak for yourself,” Rosalyne muttered into her drink.

Columbina crossed one leg over the other and turned her head just enough to send Sandrone a sidelong glance she hoped read as careless. “You seem tense.”

Sandrone didn’t look at her. “Shut up.”

If Columbina had possessed even a shred of wisdom, she would have stopped there.

Instead, when she rose to refill her glass, she let her fingers trail lightly over the back of Sandrone’s chair as she passed behind her--close enough to be felt, fleeting enough to be deniable.

Sandrone went rigid. Everyone saw.

Sandrone set her glass down on the table very carefully. 

“Do that again,” she said, without turning around, “and I will remove your hand.”

Columbina leaned just close enough for her breath to brush Sandrone’s ear.

“Oh,” she whispered softly, “but you wouldn’t really like that, would you?”

Then she stepped away.

Hot, then cold. Always hot, then cold.

Sandrone hated the flash of desire that came with the anger almost as much as she hated hearing Columbina laugh with Lumine ten minutes later as if nothing had happened. 

As if Sandrone were not still burning. As if Columbina had not struck the match herself and then wandered off to watch the fire from somewhere safer.

Sandrone reached for her drink.

A little later, Furina flung herself backward across Columbina’s lap in theatrical despair over some argument only Arlecchino was following. 

Columbina steadied her automatically, one hand at Furina’s waist, the other sweeping hair out of her face with absurd tenderness. It made Sandrone’s stomach turn.

So she drank more.

Then Rosalyne said something funny, and Columbina laughed, her head tipped back. She leaned against Lauma’s shoulder in shared amusement, no more than half a moment, but Sandrone’s glass struck the table hard enough that Nefer glanced over.

“Trouble?” Nefer asked mildly.

“No,” Sandrone said.

Nefer’s mouth curved. “How unfortunate.”

Across the room, Columbina had gone quieter again.

Sandrone noticed that too. She noticed everything tonight, apparently; the way Columbina’s laughter never quite relaxed when Sandrone was nearby; the way she avoided looking directly at her while still seemingly aware of exactly where she was; the brief, blank effort in her expression between one social smile and the next, as though each gesture had to be consciously arranged.

It should have soothed Sandrone, knowing she was not suffering alone.

Instead, it made her angrier.

Because if Columbina felt this too--if she was just as strained, just as frayed, just as unable to breathe around it--then why were they still doing this?

Because if Columbina felt this too, then why in God’s name were they still doing this careful little dance until it bled?

By the time the third bottle was opened, the room had slipped into that dangerous hour where everyone mistook recklessness for brilliance.

“We need a game,” Furina declared, sprawling across the sofa.

“No,” Sandrone said immediately.

“Yes,” Lumine said, already grinning.

“Sandrone, it’ll be fine. Probably harmless,” Rosalyne murmured.

“It won’t be,” said Arlecchino.

Then Furina bolt upright like she received divine revelation. “Let’s play Seven minutes in heaven!”

Sandrone closed her eyes. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” Furina said. “We’re all miserable already. We might as well be entertaining.”

“We are not doing that.”

“We are,” Lumine said, because she was exactly the sort of person to hear a terrible idea and treat it as fate the moment it became funny.

So someone produced a bottle. Objections were voiced but immediately ignored.

“Cowards may abstain,” Rosalyne said, “but they will be mocked forever.”

That, unfortunately, was enough to trap Sandrone through sheer spite.

Columbina had said almost nothing throughout the entire exchange.

She sat with one leg tucked beneath her, her glass balanced delicately between elegant fingers, her face unreadable except for the strange tightness at the corners of her mouth. 

If Sandrone had been less occupied trying not to kill Furina with her mind, she might have recognized it for what it was….Nerves.

The bottle spun.

Once. Twice.

Laughter rose and fell.

Then the bottle slowed.

And pointed...

Straight to Columbina.

The room erupted before the neck of the bottle completed its lazy final turn and landed mercilessly on Sandrone.

For one suspended beat, no one moved.

Then Furina screamed in delight. “Oh, this is glorious.”

“Absolutely not,” Sandrone said, already standing up. which was, unfortunately, the tone that always made people want to continue.

“Sit down,” Rosalyne said.

“Go to hell!”

“Later,” Rosalyne replied. “Closet first.”

Everyone else was laughing too hard to be useful. 

“The door's functional,” Arlecchino said, opening it. “Unfortunately.”

Sandrone turned to Columbina, expecting--what? A joke. A refusal. Some airy little comment that would let them both escape with their pride intact.

But Columbina only looked back at her, and said, “Sandrone, If you don’t want to, I’ll refuse.”

That should have been a relief.

Instead it scraped Sandrone raw. Even now, even here, Columbina was the first to step back.

“I’m not afraid to be alone with you,” Sandrone said.

Columbina’s expression flickered. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

The room had gone quieter around them, amusement sharpening into attention. Their friends could smell blood now. That made honesty more difficult and cruelty easier.

Columbina lowered her gaze for a fraction of a second. “I meant I wouldn’t force you.”

Something in Sandrone twisted painfully. It sounded sincere. It also sounded like distance. Like formal courtesy where once there had been sparks.

Before she could stop herself, she said, “You didn’t seem terribly worried about forcing my attention before.”

Columbina went pale. And the tension suddenly hung heavy in the room.

Arlecchino murmured from the doorway, “Interesting.”

Furina was scandalized and thrilled, “Oh, they are really fighting.”

Sandrone knew immediately she had gone too far.

And because she knew it, because everyone knew it, because Columbina’s face had closed with that quiet particular hurt Sandrone now recognized and loathed in herself, there was absolutely no taking it back.

Columbina sat down her glass. “No,” she said softly. “I suppose I wasn’t.”

Then she stood and walked to the open closet.

Every step of it was unbearable. She did not look back.

Arlecchino held the door wider. Columbina stepped inside. After a second, Sandrone followed.

The door shut behind them.

Outside, laughter broke like surf against the wood. Inside, there was only breathing. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The space was too small. That was Sandrone’s first coherent thought.

The second was that Columbina smelled like liquor and the same faint floral perfume that had been haunting Sandrone’s patience for months.

The third was that she had made a terrible mistake.

Not because they were alone. Because now there was no one else to absorb the impact of what sat between them.

The closet was narrow, all dark wood and hanging coats, shelves pressing close overhead. Columbina stood with her back near the wall, one hand still resting at her side as if she had not decided what to do with it. 

Sandrone remained by the door, every muscle in her body wound too tight.

Outside, Furina shouted, “No murdering! Kissing is allowed, emotional devastation is encouraged!”

Neither spoke. One second. Two. Three.

Columbina could practically hear Sandrone deciding which part of this to hate first.

Finally Sandrone said, “If this is another one of your performances, save it.”

Columbina flinched before she could stop herself.

The silence after that was different. Less angry and more dangerous.

“I didn’t come in here to perform,” Columbina said.

“Then why did you come in?”

Because you challenged me. Because I wanted to be where you were. Because every time you look at me like that I just couldn’t help myself.

“Would you believe me if I answered honestly?” Columbina asked.

Sandrone laughed once, low and bitter. “That depends. Are you capable of it tonight?”

That hurt because she deserved it.

Columbina tipped her head back against the wall and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “You really do think the worst of me now.”

Sandrone’s reply came quickly, as though it had been waiting. “You trained me to.”

Columbina looked at her. Sandrone was breathing too steadily. She looked angry, yes, but beneath the anger was something much more exhausted. 

Months of wanting sharpened into resentment. Hope turned sour from being denied too long.

Columbina’s chest ached. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“No,” Sandrone said. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to do any of it. That doesn’t change the fact that you still did it.”

Sandrone folded her arms. “If this is amusing to you, I’d like you to know I’m not in the mood.”

Columbina smiled automatically, then let it fade when Sandrone didn’t rise to it. “I know.”

Sandrone laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Do you?”

Sandrone turned her face away for a moment, as if reassembling her control piece by piece. 

“You spend weeks provoking me. Following me. Touching me whenever you please. Saying things you know will stay with me for hours afterward.” Her voice lowered. “And then the moment I think you might mean any of it, you vanish.”

Columbina stared at her. Outside, someone knocked once against the door. Neither of them answered.

Sandrone continued, somehow more furious. “Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

The answer was yes. 

The answer was exactly like being skinned alive.

But Columbina had never been very brave when it came to things that mattered.

“So you noticed,” she said instead, aiming for lightness and missing by a mile.

Sandrone’s expression hardened. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That.” Sandrone stepped forward, just once, but it changed everything in the tiny space between them. “Stop hiding behind jokes every time this becomes real.”

Columbina’s throat tightened.

She wanted, suddenly and violently, to leave. To laugh it off. To open the door and call the whole thing absurd.

Instead she said, too softly, “You think I’m playing with you.”

“Yes,” Sandrone said without hesitation.

Columbina closed her eyes briefly. “I’m not.”

“Then what am I supposed to think?” Sandrone demanded. “You act like I matter until the moment I might say you matter too, and then you’re gone. You’re warm with everyone, Columbina. You smile at everyone. You touch everyone. How exactly was I meant to believe any of it was different with me?”

That hurt because it was fair. 

It hurt more because Columbina understood why Sandrone believed it.

“I’m not like that with you,” she said.

Sandrone’s jaw flexed. “You are.”

Columbina pushed off the wall. Their shoes nearly touched. “Then say it. Since we’re trapped in here and apparently being honest by force. Say what I did.”

Sandrone went very still.

Columbina’s hands had begun to tremble, so she clasped them behind her back.

Sandrone stared at her. Then, slowly, she unfolded her arms.

“You flirt,” she said. “Relentlessly.”

Columbina almost smiled. “That’s hardly a crime.”

“With everyone? No. With me?” Sandrone stepped forward one pace. “With me, when you know very well what effect it has?”

Columbina swallowed.

Sandrone kept going, voice tightening. “You come close. You say things no one says by accident. You touch me as if it’s nothing. Then the moment I start to think--” She stopped herself abruptly it almost looked painful.

Columbina’s pulse stumbled. “Think what?”

Sandrone’s jaw flexed. “You know what.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Why?” Sandrone asked, suddenly furious again. “So you can retreat the instant it becomes inconvenient? So you can smile and tell me I imagined it?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

Because I have been starving for one honest word from you.

But that sounded too vulnerable, so Columbina did what she always did when cornered by sincerity.

She smiled.

Sandrone’s expression darkened at once. “There. That. You see? You can’t even help yourself.”

The smile vanished like it had never been. “You think I’m mocking you.”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

Sandrone moved abruptly, but grief made her clumsy. Columbina moved too.

“This is your fault,” Sandrone said, voice shaking with fury and shame. “Do you understand that? You keep coming close and pulling away and I have spent months thinking I was sick because of it.”

Columbina flinched. “Sandrone--”

“No, don’t. Don’t say my name like that and then pretend tomorrow like we’re strangers.”

The words struck because they were true.

Columbina swallowed. “I was trying to do the right thing.”

Sandrone laughed, but it came out broken through the tears still wet on her face. There was no amusement in it--only disbelief.

“By what standard?” she asked. “Because from where I’m standing, it feels cruel.”

“It was cruel,” Columbina shot back, and the sudden force of it made Sandrone flinch. Hurt flared visibly across Columbina’s face, bright and unguarded in its honesty. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

Sandrone stared at her.

For one suspended moment, Columbina seemed to realize how much she had revealed just by saying it. Then the fragile restraint she had been holding around herself gave way all at once.

“I stepped back because I was afraid,” she said, and now her voice was shaking badly enough that she could no longer smooth it over. 

“Afraid that if I let too much of it show and you didn’t feel the same, I would lose you. Afraid that if you did feel the same, it would still ruin us anyway.” Her breath caught. “Afraid that wanting you at all meant there was something…wrong with me.”

Sandrone went utterly still.

“I went to confession,” Columbina said, and now the words were spilling out too quickly to gather back. “I sat in the dark and told a priest I was having awful thoughts about you.” Her mouth twisted, equal parts misery and disbelief. 

“He sounded like I’d just informed him the Virgin herself had climbed down from her pedestal to strike him across the face.”

Against all reason, Sandrone let out a broken, startled sound that was almost a laugh.

Columbina lowered her hand and looked at her. She looked at her with all the defenses gone, eyes bright and damp and wide open with longing. There was nowhere left now for either of them to hide.

“I have been unbearable because I like you,” Columbina said. 

Her voice shook on the words, but she did not take them back.

“I have been cruel because I like you. I annoy you because when you get angry, at least I know I matter to you. And then when it starts to feel too real, I panic and run because I don’t know what we’re allowed to be.”

Sandrone’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

Columbina gave a small, broken breath and looked away for half a second, as if even now she could not quite bear the sight of Sandrone hearing all of this.

“I thought,” Columbina said, “that maybe you only despised me. That maybe I had invented the rest because wanting this was easier if I could pretend you wanted it too.”

Something in Sandrone’s face gave way then. Her eyes filled again, but not with the same misery as before.

“You idiot,” she whispered.

Columbina’s mouth trembled around the ghost of a laugh. “I know.”

“No,” Sandrone said, stepping closer, voice raw with months of unshed truth. “You absolute idiot. I have been losing my mind over you.”

“There,” Columbina said quickly, as though she had to force the last of it out before courage abandoned her. “That’s the truth. Since you wanted it so badly.”

For the first time that night, Sandrone looked genuinely stunned.

Columbina hated it at once. Hated the nakedness of what she had admitted. Hated the sudden, awful hope that flared in Sandrone’s eyes before caution smothered it again.

“So,” Columbina said, retreating into brittle self-mockery because it was the only shield she had left, “Congratulations. You were right. I’m dreadful at this.”

She moved to step past her. Sandrone caught her wrist. The touch was instant and searing. Columbina stopped as if she had walked into flame.

“Why would you think I didn’t feel the same?” Sandrone asked.

Columbina stopped breathing.

Sandrone was looking at her now with none of her usual armor intact. Just raw frustration and something softer beneath it, something frayed from being hidden too long.

“You drive me insane,” Sandrone said. “You interrupt me. You derail my thoughts. You say one ridiculous thing and I spend the rest of the day thinking about how you said it.” 

Her grip tightened by the smallest fraction, enough to make Columbina’s pulse jump.

“And every time you pull away, I tell myself I imagined all of it. That you were only being yourself. That I was a fool for reading meaning into any of it.”

Columbina took one careful breath, then another, steadying herself against the violence of her own heart.

“You should know,” she said softly, “that I wasn’t stepping back because I didn’t want you.”

Columbina’s hands were clasped in front of her so tightly. “I was stepping back because I did. Because every time it started to feel real, I got scared.”

“I never enjoyed hurting you. Not really.” Her eyes met Sandrone’s then, stripped bare by honesty. “It was just-you’re so composed all the time, and when I was the reason you weren’t…” Her voice faltered. “It felt…intimate. Like I could get under the surface where no one else was allowed.”

Sandrone’s anger shifted.

Because that--God help her--was dangerously close to the truth of her own feelings. She had liked it too, in her own way…liked that Columbina could unsettle her. Because it meant she mattered enough to become a danger.

“You could have asked to be let under the surface,” Sandrone said.

Columbina’s mouth curved faintly with a sad sort of smile. “Have you met you?”

Despite everything, Sandrone almost laughed again.

Then she stepped forward. Only one pace, but the closet was so small it transformed the distance instantly. Columbina’s breath hitched. Sandrone heard it. Felt the answer to that sound in her own pulse.

“If I tell you something now,” Sandrone said, “I need you not to turn it into a joke.”

Columbina straightened. Every trace of levity left her face. “I won’t.”

Sandrone studied her for a moment, as if searching her face for any sign of retreat, any last trace of evasion. Then she seemed to decide that if she hesitated now, she would lose her nerve entirely.

“I was jealous,” Sandrone said. 

The words came with visible effort, as if confession did not get easier because it was no longer taking place in a chapel.

“Of Furina draped across your lap as if she belonged there. Of Rosalyne making you laugh. Of Lumine getting your attention without having to bleed for it first.” Her throat tightened around the last words, but she forced them out anyway. 

“I hated how easily you seemed to belong to everyone.”

Columbina’s face changed at once. The last remnants of defensiveness vanished.

Sandrone’s voice was rough and hurt, too late to hide now.

“Because what I wanted from you never felt like the sort of thing everyone else got.”

For a second, Columbina said nothing at all. Then very softly, she said: “You were never everyone else.”

Sandrone’s chest went tight enough to hurt. 

“Then why…” she asked, the wound in it was completely laid open, without any attempt to disguise it, “did you keep making me feel like I was?”

Columbina’s expression broke. “Because I don’t know how to want carefully,” she whispered. “and I was trying so hard not to frighten you with how much I did.”

Outside, someone knocked again, louder this time.

“Are you two alive?” Lauma called.

“Unfortunately,” Arlecchino said.

Neither of them answered.

Sandrone took another step forward. They were close now. Close enough that she could see the fine strain in Columbina’s face, the rapid pulse at her throat, the effort it was costing her to stand still--as if one wrong movement might shatter whatever fragile truth had finally emerged between them.

For once, Sandrone chose not to think three conversations ahead. She asked the thing that mattered most.

“When you pulled away,” she said, “were you ever hoping I would stop you?”

Columbina’s lips parted. Then she nodded. “Yes.”

somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, all the painful distance they had been holding up between themselves gave way at last.

Columbina began to cry very quietly. Sandrone looked wrecked by the sight of it.

Neither reached out at first. The restraint was almost painful to watch, as if both of them had spent so long fearing their own desire that even now, with the truth laid bare, touch felt like crossing a border they might still be punished for. 

Like a transgression they might still be hunted for.

It was Columbina who broke first, her gesture small and trembling. Her palm uncertainly turned upward between them. It was a silent and terrified plea.

Sandrone looked at it. Then, with all the reverence of a prayer she was afraid to say wrong, she placed her hand in Columbina’s.

Their fingers curled together. Both of them inhaled sharply. It was only a handhold. Nothing scandalous. Nothing dramatic.

And yet the relief of it nearly brought Sandrone to her knees.

“If I kiss you,” Columbina whispered, her eyes shimmering, “will you still accuse me of playing games?”

“No.” Sandrone’s answer surprised even herself. She sounded desperately wanting of that kiss.

“Good. because If I don’t kiss you now,” Columbina went on, voice thinning with nerves, “I may lose what little courage I have left.”

Too much resentment still lived in both of them, too much unsorted hurt. The first press of lips felt almost like an argument finding a different form. It was testing, demanding, a desperate collision of teeth and disbelief.

Columbina’s hand caught in the front of Sandrone’s coat, and Sandrone made a sharp sound against her lips at the contact. Then something gave way.

Relief, perhaps. Or grief. Or simply the end of endurance.

The next kiss was deeper, hungrier, all the months of hot-and-cold misery collapsing into one breathless answer. 

Columbina moved instinctively, crowding Sandrone back until her shoulders met the shelves with a soft clatter. Sandrone’s hands found her neck with sudden conviction, pulling her in desperately. 

Columbina laughed once into the kiss, dazzled by it, and Sandrone chased the sound like she was offended by joy but wanted it anyway.

“You’re so--” Sandrone began when they broke apart for air.

“Hmm? What? So beautiful? So hot? So…irresistable?” Columbina leaned in, her forehead resting against Sandrone’s, her breath hot and uneven.

“I was going to say cruel.” Sandrone spat, though there was no venom left in it

“Oh,” Columbina said, and there was so much tenderness in it Sandrone nearly lost her place and dissolved. “you poor thing.”

Sandrone kissed her again to stop that tone before it did irreparable damage. This one deepened almost at once.

Because now there was context. Now there was permission. Now every frustrated touch that had been interrupted over the past months came rushing back with interest.

Sandrone’s carefully ordered appearance began to come apart under Columbina’s touch, and for once she did not care. 

She had spent too long being pristine around this woman. If Columbina wanted the truth, she could have the truth in every disordered breath and ruined line of her composure.

By now Sandrone’s hair was beginning to escape its careful arrangement, and Columbina, drunk on relief and affection and the sheer impossible reality of this, buried her fingers in it before she could overthink the gesture. 

Sandrone made a sound that went straight through Columbina’s chest.

“Oh,” Columbina murmured, delighted and wrecked. “So that works.”

Sandrone drew back just enough to glare. Her eyes blown out, her lips swollen and red. 

“Say one smug thing and I’ll leave you in here.”

Columbina just smiled, tracing the line of Sandrone’s ruined collar. “You won’t.”

“What made you so sure?”

“No. You won’t leave.” Columbina’s hands tightened slightly at her waist. “Not in the middle of this.”

Both of them were visibly trying and failing to recover.

“Well,” Columbina whispered in a daze, “that was overdue. You kiss like you’re settling a grudge.” 

“I am,” Sandrone said, and pulled her back in.

By the time the knocking came again, they were both thoroughly ruined for polite company.

“Seven minutes!” Lumine called from outside. “Time’s up!”

Neither of them responded. The door handle rattled.

“Open up,” Rosalyne said, sounding entertained. “Or don’t. This is already more interesting than anything else tonight.”

and then they were kissing again. The kiss still had resentment in it, but only because resentment and yearning had spent too long tangled together to separate cleanly. 

Sandrone’s clothes were suddenly a problem. Columbina’s hair was suddenly everywhere. Someone’s sleeve caught on a hook. 

Sandrone got pushed half back against the shelves and then dragged Columbina with her as if she was starving for proximity itself.

Outside, there was a thud against the door. “Time!” Lumine called.

Neither of them cared. A beat later Furina yelled, “If they don’t answer, I’m assuming scandal!”

Arlecchino said, “That’s the safest assumption.”

Inside, Columbina was laughing against Sandrone’s mouth now, breathless and bright and entirely too pleased for someone who had spent weeks emotionally devastating them both.

Sandrone kissed the laugh out of her.

When the door handle rattled, they both froze for an instant. Then the door opened and light flooded the closet.

And there they were. Sandrone’s hair disordered, clothes askew, lips thoroughly kissed; Columbina flushed and out of breath, one knee between Sandrone’s legs for leverage, one hand still tangled in her hair. 

Sandrone was half-pinned against the shelves under the ruin of Columbina’s attention, looking about three seconds away from dragging her right back in.

The room outside went dead silent. 

Arlecchino took in the scene with a single measured glance and said, “took you both long enough.”

Columbina turned her head just enough to look toward the open door, still breathing hard.

Sandrone, meanwhile, snapped back to life, shoved one sleeve into place with zero success, glared at the entire room, and shouted:

“Seven more minutes!”

Then she slammed the door.

Outside, the reaction was immediate chaos.

Furina shrieked loudly. Lumine started laughing so hard she nearly fell over. Rosalyne said, “I’m never letting either of them live this down.” Lauma said to Nefer, “I told you this was promising.”

Inside the closet, for one stunned second, neither Sandrone nor Columbina moved. Then Columbina stared at Sandrone and burst into helpless laughter.

It was full, bright and delighted. It hit Sandrone like sunlight after a siege. Sandrone covered her face with one hand. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“Oh, what am I gonna do with you?” Columbina managed between laughs.

Sandrone was flushed red with embarrassment. She wanted nothing more than to be kissed senseless again. She didn’t want to think about anything else. 

“Columbina…” Sandrone hated how needy it sounded. 

“Yes?” Columbina was caught off guard by sudden softness. This was everything she hoped and more. She’s living the dream now. 

“I—please…uhm…kiss, I need you to kiss me more.” Sandrone tried. She was having a hard time holding Columbina’s gaze. 

Cute. Columbina thought. “You adore me.”

Sandrone lowered her hand just enough to glare at her through her fingers. “Let’s not become arrogant.”

Columbina’s smile softened. That softness hurts in a completely different way now.

Slowly and carefully, she adjusted the collar Sandrone had half-pulled loose in the process of kissing her senseless. The gesture was small and intimate. Then she proceeded to pepper Sandrone’s face with apologetic kisses. 

“Are we all right?” Columbina asked.

There was too much in the question for anything glib to survive it.

Sandrone looked at her for a long moment. At the mussed hair, the swollen lips, the nervousness just beginning to creep back in, now that the immediate rush had passed. At the hope Columbina was trying and failing to hide.

“No,” Sandrone said honestly.

Columbina’s face fell.

Then Sandrone put a hand at her neck again and drew her in until there was barely room for breath between them.

“You’re not gonna charm your way out of this” she said, softer now. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily.”

Columbina let out a shaky laugh. “Could I kiss my way out of it instead?”

“Please, save some for later. I don’t want to continue making out in this cramped closet.” Sandrone cupped Columbina’s cheek. “But for what it’s worth I’m glad we’re done pretending this was merely friendship.”

Columbina looked genuinely defenseless. “That,” she said very quietly, “depends on whether you still want me after all the pretending.”

Sandrone stared at her. Then in all seriousness and absolutely no mercy, she said, “Columbina, I just demanded seven more minutes.”

Columbina laughed so hard she had to press her forehead into Sandrone’s shoulder. Sandrone held her there, feeling the laughter shake through both of them, feeling something long-knotted finally loosen in her chest.

When Columbina lifted her head again, her expression had gone soft in a way that made Sandrone’s entire body go weak.

“So you do want me,” Columbina murmured.

“Against my better judgment.” Sandrone deadpanned

“Good. I want you too. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. ” 

That dragged a laugh from Sandrone. Outside, Furina shouted through the door, “If you two start confessing in there without us, I will be furious!”

“They already did, obviously.” Rosalyne replied.

Arlecchino added, “Given by the state of Sandrone’s hair, the confession was accepted.”

Sandrone closed her eyes in brief suffering. “We’re never going to hear the end of this.”

“No,” Columbina said, smiling. “But at least now it can be our fault for a better reason.”

Sandrone studied her for another second, then said, “When we leave this closet, if you start acting distant again, I will kill you.”

Columbina’s expression shifted at once. “I know,” she said. “I’m going to be afraid anyway.”

“So am I.” 

“You are?”

Sandrone’s mouth thinned. “I dislike vulnerability. You may have noticed.”

“A little.”

“But I dislike this pathetic version of us more.” Sandrone’s hand tightened slightly at her neck. “So if you panic, say that you’re panicking. Don’t make me guess whether you’ve completely changed your mind.”

Columbina looked at her like she’d been handed something delicate. “Alright,” she whispered.

“And if I withdraw,” Sandrone continued, because fairness demanded it and because if they were doing honesty now, they were doing it properly, 

“It may mean I’m angry, but it may also mean I’m trying not to say something before I know how to say it well.”

Columbina smiled faintly. “That sounds exactly like you.”

“Yes.” Sandrone paused. “You’ll have to make me say it anyway.”

“Oh,” Columbina said, her voice bright. “That I can do.”

Sandrone rolled her eyes. “Obviously. You’re still dense as a prick!”

Another knock.

“Enough,” Rosalyne called. “Either come out or move in.”

Columbina leaned closer, lips brushing the corner of Sandrone’s mouth in one last, stealing sort of kiss. “do you want to stay in here forever?”

“No,” Sandrone said, then added, “Temporarily, maybe.”

Columbina grinned. Sandrone hated how fond that made her feel. Reluctantly, she reached for the door.

Before opening it, Columbina caught her wrist. Sandrone turned back.

Columbina’s expression had gone uncharacteristically earnest again. “For the record,” she said softly, “I really am sorry.”

Sandrone held her gaze. “For what part?”

Columbina’s smile turned rueful. “Where do you want me to start?”

Sandrone almost smiled. “Start with the hot-and-cold routine.”

Columbina nodded. “I’m sorry for making you feel played with. I was a coward. I was really just frightened.”

“For flirting with everyone else.” Sandrone coaxed.

“I’m sorry for weaponizing your jealousy because I was too afraid to ask for reassurance.”

“The tea was nice,” Sandrone said after a beat.

Columbina blinked. “What?”

“The tea. You gave me then. It was nice.”

For one second Columbina looked so startled by the olive branch that Sandrone wanted to kiss her again just to stop that ridiculous expression.

Instead Columbina laughed softly. “Thank you.”

Then, because apparently honesty had become contagious in confined spaces, Sandrone said, “I’m sorry for assuming the worst. All I ever wanted was to be with…you”

Columbina’s eyes went warm. “That was the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me”

“Don’t ruin it.”

“Never.”

Sandrone opened the door. The room beyond instantly straightened like a pack of predators pretending not to have been listening.

Furina failed first. “Well?!”

Rosalyne raised a brow. “You both look guilty.”

“We are,” Columbina said serenely.

Sandrone shot her a look.

Arlecchino’s gaze moved between them, cataloguing details . “Resolved?”

Sandrone and Columbina exchanged one quick glance.

“Yeah I guess, partially,” Sandrone said.

Nefer smiled into her drink. “That sounds worse.”

“It usually is,” Rosalyne said.

Lumane, lifted the bottle. “So. Another round?”

“No,” said Sandrone. 

“Yes,” said Columbina at the exact same time.

The room erupted. Sandrone put a hand over her eyes. Beside her, Columbina was laughing again--closer and familiar in a new way, shoulder brushing hers without hesitation.

This time, when Sandrone felt it, she didn’t tense for the inevitable retreat.

Because Columbina stayed.

And when Sandrone let her hand drift until their fingers touched briefly at their sides, Columbina turned her hand and held on.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That night in the dormitory, Sandrone did not trust herself to look across the room.

She folded her uniform, braided her hair for sleep, climbed into bed, and pulled the blanket up too high despite the mild weather.

Her body still burned where Columbina had touched her.

Lights-out came. The dormitory dimmed to moonlit outlines and quiet rustling. Sandrone lay rigid, her eyes open.

She heard Columbina settle in her own bed.

Sandrone told herself this was sensible. After what had happened in the closet, silence was probably mercy. It gave them time to think. It was a necessary distance. A chance to let their nerves stop shrieking.

Minutes passed. Then at last, so faintly she might have imagined it, Columbina whispered into the dark:

“Sandrone, Are you still angry with me?”

Sandrone stared at the black space between beds.

“What? No,” she whispered back.

“Are you lying?”

Sandrone considered. “I’m just a little shaken up.” That seemed fair. Guilt doesn’t go away that easily. 

“I keep remembering your face.” Columbina said. That sentence went through Sandrone like a wire.

Sandrone swallowed. “I can’t decide if tonight improved matters or ruined them.”

Sandrone shut her eyes on instinct, as if that could somehow hide her from the words.

“That’s a cruel thing to say before sleep.” Columbina said. “Do you intend to keep me up all night with your words?”

Sandrone turned onto her side, staring into the dark. “I think it proved they were real.”

Sandrone pressed her fingertips to the cheek Columbina had touched. “I’m afraid, Columbina.” 

Sandrone whispered. “I’m afraid that if I love you too much, I’m never gonna be able to repent properly.”

When Columbina spoke again, her voice was cracked around the edges.

“I don’t know whether that’s the saddest thing you’ve ever said to me, or the most intimate.”

Sandrone laughed once under her breath, the sound thin with exhaustion. “Perhaps both.”

“Sandrone.”

“Yes?”

A pause long enough to make her turn her head toward the sound.

“When I kissed you,” Columbina said, very carefully, “I was not thinking anything impure.”

Sandrone’s breath hitched.

“I was thinking,” Columbina went on, “that you looked beautiful and brave. and that I wanted to be gentle enough not to frighten you.”

Sandrone felt her eyes burn.

“How do you make it sound so easy?” she whispered.

“It’s not,” Columbina said softly. “But it’s true.”

Sandrone cried quietly into her pillow sometime later, it was not about frustration this time around, but with the sheer unbearable tenderness of being wanted carefully by someone who still did not know what to do with the wanting.

Across the room, Columbina did not sleep much either.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day they lasted until midday before speaking alone.

It happened in the corridor outside the chapel after morning Mass, where sunlight fell in long bands through the stained glass and painted their uniforms red and blue.

Girls moved around them in twos and threes, chatter bright and ordinary.

Columbina fell into step beside Sandrone with suspicious casualness.

“You didn’t answer my question from last night.”

Sandrone kept walking. “I answered several.”

“The important one.”

“Oh, that narrows it down.”

Columbina glanced at her, lips twitching despite herself. “Would you like to try that again without being impossible?”

“No.”

“That was not the question.”

Sandrone stopped walking. The corridor flowed around them for a second, then thinned as other students moved on.

She turned to face Columbina fully.

“What do you want me to say?”

Columbina’s stance weakened at once under the directness of it. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Perhaps just whether you regret it.”

Sandrone stared. “Regret what?”

“Kissing me, loving me…everything” Columbina’s voice shook. 

“I don’t regret wanting to kiss you,” Sandrone said slowly, “I regret making you cry.”

Sandrone, in her own way, also had that instinct toward gentleness even when conflicted with her thoughts, and even in the middle of wanting.

Sandrone felt something in her chest loosen and ache all at once. 

“I wasn’t crying because I didn’t want you,” Columbina reassured, barely above a whisper. “Remember that, okay?”

Sandrone went silent. 

Columbina’s expression changed into stunned, aching panic. “Sandrone...” 

“But I’m not ready yet,” Sandrone said quickly, before courage failed. “Not when I still feel as though I’m committing blasphemy with my whole body.”

Columbina flinched as if the word had struck them both. Then she nodded. 

“Alright. I completely understand ”

The ease of it, the fact that Columbina did not push, did not sulk, did not turn hurt into teasing, made Sandrone want to do something reckless and impossible…like trust her fully.

Columbina seemed to see that thought passing through her and took a careful breath.

“Don’t worry, I can wait,” she said.

Sandrone’s immediate response was suspicious. “Can you?”

A smile touched Columbina’s mouth. “I dislike waiting, but for you, I will.” she said. “I’ll do anything for you.”

That answer was so honest Sandrone nearly smiled back her cheeks burned and she immediately averted her gaze. “You--you had better.”

“I will.”

A group of younger students rounded the corner laughing, and the moment folded itself up again. Like a secret only both of them knew. 

As they started walking once more, Columbina spoke without looking at her.

“Oh! I left a note in your workbook.”

Sandrone’s pulse stumbled. “You continue to make that book more useful than the language itself.”

“I do what I can.”

Sandrone spent the entire next lesson acutely aware of the note waiting for it like a heartbeat hidden in paper.

She didn’t open it until study hall.

She waited until the room was quiet, until Sister Agata was occupied at the front desk, until no one was likely to notice the tremor in her hands.

Then she slid the note free from the workbook and unfolded it beneath the desk.

Columbina’s handwriting filled the small square with unusual neatness.

I don’t  know what God intends for girls like us.

I only know that when I kissed you, I didn’t feel far from Him. I felt frightened, yes. Guilty, yes. But not filthy.

I don’t know if that is comfort or more confusion.

But I know I want to be patient with you.

I know I want to deserve your trust.

I know your face has followed me into every prayer since then.

I love you, Sandrone.

If that’s a sin, then at least let me commit to honesty while I’m suffering through it.

Sandrone read it once. Then again. By the third time, the words had begun to blur.

She lowered the paper into her lap and pressed her lips together hard enough to hurt.

Nothing in the room changed. Girls are still fussing over assignments. The crucifix above the blackboard still hung in place.

And yet Sandrone felt as though something inside her had been rearranged. Not because the note solved anything.

But because it made one thing impossible to deny:

Columbina’s guilt was not emptiness. It was not a dismissal. It was not the cool recoil of someone toying with her and then losing interest.

It was grief, fear and reverence twisted into pain.

Which, Sandrone thought miserably, might have been worse. Or better. She no longer knew.

She turned the note over and wrote on the back before she could think herself out of it.

You’re unbelievable 

Then, after a long moment:

But thank you.

And then, because apparently she was incapable of moderation where Columbina was concerned:

I didn’t feel filthy either. That’s what scared me. 

I think I just have too much affection for you to fit calmly inside. 

You make me feel reckless. 

You make me feel weak. 

…and I love you too. A lot. 

That's all you need to know. 

…don’t ask for more

She added that line at the end meant to save face, a clumsy attempt to shield and keep herself from being completely exposed.

She folded the note with unsteady fingers. She handed the paper forward and watched it vanish into the sea of desks. 

The other girls saw everything and said nothing, their silence a shared secret that made Sandrone feel like she was walking toward a gallows she had built herself. She felt doomed but finally free of the weight.

Because in reality, nobody needed an explanation. The room understood. It was filled with girls who had already tripped over their own hearts. Most of them had already been hollowed out by the same desperate wanting.

And so the girls passed the note with the practiced hands of people who knew the cost of the words written on it.

It was a shared language of bruised hearts and ruined composure; they had all been the one holding the paper before.

Across the room, Columbina received it without looking up.

A minute later her shoulders rose on a breath that seemed to catch. She did not turn around. but the back of her neck went pink.

Sandrone had to look down at her own desk for the rest of study hall because if she watched that happen any longer, she might actually begin to believe in mercy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just before lights-out that evening, Father Benedetto spotted them leaving the chapel at nearly the same time.The girls were trying very hard not to seem connected. 

They try and fail to act indifferent towards each other when there is someone else. 

The priest looked at Sandrone, who was pale and composed but looked like one sentence away from weeping.

He looked at Columbina, who had the stillness of a girl pretending she had never once in her life been near Sandrone. 

The priest looked upward briefly. The girls were definitely not doing a great job at hiding things. 

Then, very quietly, he said to no one visible, “Lord, I’m begging for a smaller problem.”

Neither girl heard him. And that was probably for the best.

Sandrone lingered by the doorway like she was trying to convince herself to leave, fingers barely catching the edge of Columbina’s sleeve.

“Can I...stay with you tonight?” she asked, so quietly. “At your bed, I mean. Just--just to sleep.”

Columbina looked down at the small, hesitant tug on her sleeve and felt her heart melt on the spot. It was, without question, the cutest thing she had ever seen. 

Sandrone, usually so composed, standing there with that tiny, needy little plea in her voice like asking for comfort was the hardest thing in the world.

And Columbina, who had never been very good at denying Sandrone anything, certainly wasn’t about to start with that.

Her smile turned soft, fond and helpless. “Of course you can.”

Sandrone’s grip tightened just a little, as if she needed to make sure Columbina meant it.

Columbina laughed under her breath and slipped her hand over Sandrone’s, gently pulling her closer. 

“You never have to ask like it’s too much,” she murmured. “If you want to stay, stay.”

The relief on Sandrone’s face was small but unmistakable, and Columbina thought, not for the first time, that she would let this girl ask for absolutely anything if she looked at her like that.

So she led her back to the dorm, sleeve still caught in Sandrone’s hand, and let herself pretend not to notice how impossibly precious it was.

There were still a thousand sins left between them to confess and a long, penance-filled road to any kind of grace, 

But right now, the war was finally over...this was their only liturgy.

And the mere act of staying was a mercy they hadn't yet earned, but were finally willing to keep.