Work Text:
"Praise be, Becka, may the Lord shine His face upon this marriage," said Aunt Lydia at the start of the housewarming Becka and her husband, Commander Garth Chapin, had decided to host.
In truth, Becka had been dreading the day she had to see her friends again. No one had come to check on her after the wedding. Not Hulda, not Daisy, not even Shunammite, who had previously been ecstatic to laugh at what Garth had made of their home. None of them came, but that wasn't what upset Becka the most.
"Agnes," Becka mumbled, hands fidgeting and fussing over her new Wife dress.
"I'm sorry, Rebecca?" Aunt Lydia stared at Becka with eyes that seemed to say, Don't get yourself hung.
"Yeah, praise be, Aunt Lydia," said Becka, forcing herself back into the room as Aunt Lydia swept past her into the sitting room, already onto the next thing that needed attending to.
The topic of Agnes tended to do this to her sometimes. She'd think too much about her childhood friend and begin to imagine a world where they could be together, married, maybe with a pet dog. But those thoughts had to stop as soon as they began. After all, Gilead doesn't take kindly to gender traitors. And after the kiss the two shared, rather, the kiss Becka thought they had shared, the kiss that lived in her memory, foggy and distant, she knew they were in danger. If it had even happened at all.
That was the problem. She didn't know.
What she did know, when the door finally opened an hour into the housewarming, was that Agnes was late. Which was not like her.
She came through the door with the careful posture that all the girls had been drilled into at school, chin level, hands folded. She had her Martha with her, since her wedding plans had fallen through and left her with no husband or chaperone to these kinds of events. Despite this, Agnes walked in the way she always had, composed and graceful, like she was the only person in any room who knew exactly where she was going. And Becka, against her better judgment, could not look away. Her eyes followed Agnes's, which had already moved past her and into the sitting room where the other guests had gathered.
“Fuck.”
Becka's stomach dropped and then righted itself. She had been doing this for a month. The dropping and the righting. She was getting very tired of it. She was also very tired of being a hostess, especially when her best friend, her favorite person, won’t even spare her a glance.
Even so, the housewarming moved around them in its usual performance. Commander Chapin accepted congratulations near the fireplace. The tapestry above the mantle, a brown flag with the symbol of Gilead printed on, had not been chosen by Becka. She had not been asked. Hulda made a comment about the flower arrangement. Shunammite examined the parlor drapes and began whispering over to Daisy.
Becka stood at the window and tried to remember.
This was what the month had been, mostly. Trying to remember. They'd given her something before the ceremony, she knew that much. The hours that followed gave her fuzzy, almost foreign memories. The vows that came out of her mouth like they belonged to someone else, the drive home that felt like watching her own life from the wrong end of a telescope. Like Lot's wife, she kept looking back. But Lot's wife had a God who noticed. Becka had made it through the ceremony untouched by any divine salt pillar, only the drug wearing off slowly and her new name settling around her like a stone.
She remembered being with Agnes at some point during all of it; the white anteroom, sheer drapes, and Agnes looking at her as if she was the only solid thing in it. And then the drug pulled everything back under, leaving Becka with nothing but the outline of a feeling she couldn't prove and couldn't stop having. The kind of feeling Gilead had words for. The kind that ended on the Wall.
Becka's thoughts had been interrupted by a presence beside her. She didn't have to look to know who it was.
She looked anyway.
"Your home is lovely," Agnes said, to the window.
"The Commander did most of the work,” said Becka, turning to gaze out the window as well.
Outside, the street was empty in the way Gilead streets were always empty after dark: completely, deliberately, like something being held back.
Becka had told herself she would not ask. She had made this decision very firmly before the guests arrived, and again in the entryway, and again three times while standing at the window. She was not going to ask, because asking meant admitting she didn't know, and not knowing meant admitting what they'd done to her, and what they'd done to her meant the wedding and the Commander and all the rest of it that she had not yet found a way to look at directly.
"I wasn't myself," Becka murmured, "at the wedding."
It came out before she'd decided to say it. Agnes went very still.
"No," Agnes said quietly. "You weren't."
"They gave me something."
"Yes," replied Agnes. "I know."
Becka looked at the curtain. Her hands had gone very still on her dress, all the fidgeting stopped. "I remember the moments right before," she said. "Bits of it. I remember you were there. I remember- I think I remember-" She stopped. The fog hit her brain once again. Something on the other side of it that she could almost make out. "I don't know what's real."
The silence stretched. Aunt Lydia laughed at something across the room. Commander Chapin accepted another round of congratulations.
"Becka," Agnes said. Just her name, the real one, the one that had nothing to do with her husband or wifely duties or any of it.
Becka looked at her. She hadn't meant to. But Agnes was already looking back, and her expression was the clearest thing in the room. Clearer than the tapestry, clearer than the chandelier, clearer than the month of trying to remember. It was the expression of someone who had been carrying something alone for a very long time and was deciding, right now, whether to put it down.
"It was real," Agnes confirmed.
The chandelier went on burning. Shunammite went on talking. The other commanders continued laughing about God knows what.
Becka turned back to the window. In the dark glass their reflections floated side by side, closer than they were permitted to stand in real life, close in the way that only the window would allow.
"Oh," mumbled Becka. The fog had cleared. The shape of it, finally, coming through.
"Yes," said Agnes. And then, because she had been carrying it alone for weeks and the weight of it had become specific: "I wasn't going to say anything. I've been-" She stopped. "I didn't know if you'd want to know."
"I needed to know," Becka nearly interrupted. "I kept thinking I'd invented it."
"You didn't."
A beat. Longer this time. The party filled the silence for them, with silverware, laughter, and the male voices carrying over all of it.
"Agnes," Becka started.
"Don't," said Agnes, very quietly.
"I'm not going to say anything dangerous."
"Everything you say is dangerous right now."
That was true. Becka knew it was true. She said it anyway. "I thought about you every day. Since the anteroom. I kept thinking-" She stopped, looking for the version of the sentence that could survive the room. "I kept thinking it wasn't fair. That I didn't get to remember it properly. That they took that from me too."
Agnes didn't answer immediately. When she did, her voice was so low Becka had to lean almost imperceptibly forward to catch it. "I remember all of it," she whispered. "I've been trying not to."
"Has it worked?"
A pause. "No."
Outside the window a car moved slowly down the empty street and then was gone. Becka watched it disappear and felt, with a clarity she hadn't had in weeks, that she had wasted enough time being uncertain. The drug was gone. The fog was gone. What was left was this: Agnes, two feet away, reflected in dark glass, having carried the real and complete memory of the anteroom through a month of silence because she hadn't known if Becka would want it back.
"I used to think about a dog," Becka said.
Agnes blinked. "What?"
"When I'd let myself think about… things. I'd imagine a dog. Stupid."
A pause. And then Agnes, so carefully, so quietly in the register of two women discussing absolutely nothing: "What kind?”
Becka almost laughed. She caught it just in time and rearranged it into something that looked like a Wife's pleasant smile. "I don't know. Big enough to take up the whole bed."
"That sounds impractical."
"I know."
Agnes was quiet for a moment. Then: "Brown, I think. If we… if I were to imagine. Brown, with a stupid face."
We. Agnes had started to say we. She had caught it and corrected it, but not before Becka had heard it, and Agnes knew she'd heard it.
"Agnes-" Becka started.
"Daisy came to see me," Agnes said suddenly, cutting her off. "Last week. While my parents were at the district meeting."
Becka turned that over. She had never fully trusted Daisy, who smiled too easily and knew too much and had never quite looked like she belonged here, which in retrospect explained a great deal.
"She stayed a long time," Agnes continued, to the window, to no one, to the empty street outside. "We talked about where she grew up. Before Gilead." A pause. "She described it very carefully. The routes you'd take to get there. What it looked like when you arrived." Another pause. "She made it sound very beautiful."
Becka said nothing.
"She said it was the kind of place where you could be anything," Agnes said. "Where you could live however you wanted. With whoever you wanted." The last two sentences landed gently, like something fragile being set on a shelf. "She said people go there and just start over. A whole new life in whatever shape you wanted it to take."
"That sounds very far away," said Becka, after a moment, turning to face Agnes.
"Yes," declared Agnes. "It is."
"A person would need someone to go with," Becka said. "To a place like that. It would be a long way to go alone."
Agnes was quiet for a moment. In the dark glass her reflection was very still. She broke away from staring out to looking back at Becka. "Daisy said she knew people. People who help and know the routes and the timing and all the rest of it." Agnes reached for Becka’s hand, ensuring to make every move look strictly friendly. "She's going back. Soon, she thinks. She offered to… she said there was room. If anyone wanted to come."
"Room for how many?” asked Becka.
Agnes leaned in just slightly and whispered, "She said it as though she meant two."
Becka looked Agnes in the eyes for the first time that night. She imagined the life Agnes described, away from Gilead, away from the forced marriage, together with her person.
"What did you tell her?" Becka asked.
"I told her I'd have to think about it," clarified Agnes. "That there were considerations. Things I'd need to know first before I could say yes."
Becka understood considerations. She understood things you'd need to know first. She felt the whole weight of the last month in that sentence, and wanted to leave with Agnes right then and there.
"Agnes," she started.
"Don't," mumbled Agnes. Very quietly. "Not here."
"I know," said Becka. "I'm not going to. I just want you to know that those considerations." She stopped. Started again. "They're not considerations anymore."
The silence that followed was the quietest thing Becka had ever heard.
Agnes reached out and set her cup down on the windowsill. Her hand, Becka noticed, was not entirely steady. "I'll tell Daisy," Agnes said, "that those spots are taken."
Becka said nothing, but there was a hint of a smile on her face, a genuine smile that hadn’t been seen since before they had become Greens.
Agnes smiled right back, leaning forward to whisper in Becka’s ear to ensure no one heard her words.
“Everything will be alright, because we will be together, Rebecca.”
Agnes glanced around the room to be sure that no one was paying much attention to them, before leaving a kiss under Becka’s ear, lightly brushing her jaw.
This, Becka was sure to remember, clear as day.
Agnes leaned back and smoothed her dress. Became, in the space of a breath, the version of herself that the room required. "I should go say goodbye to the others."
"Yes," Becka nearly giggled. "Under His eye."
"Under His eye," Agnes said with a smirk.
She left. Becka stayed at the window a long time, watching the gathering begin to dwindle down. Thinking about the future promised to her. About a place where you could live however you wanted, with whoever you wanted. About what a whole life of freedom might actually look like.
A dog, she thought. Brown, probably. With a stupid face.
Garth had found her there eventually, guiding her to the doorway to bid their guests farewell. Across the room, Agnes was walking toward the exit, laughing at something her Martha had said. Becka watched her go, a bit jealous that it wasn’t her making Agnes laugh at that moment. But her day would come, soon according to Daisy.
From the front door, she looked back to the window. She looked out into the dark beyond the streetlamps where the city eventually ran out and became something else.
There was room for two, she thought.
She could be patient, she had been patient her whole life. She was very good at it.
She just hadn't, until now, had anyone to be patient for.