Sorrows do not come alone. Cat had been through enough that she should have known this well, but as she floundered for words to respond to the news, it still felt as if her stomach had been ripped out. A few weeks at the most since she lost Mayrin, and she should’ve known something else was to follow. Ralyn telling her he’d fallen in love with another woman. Anelore coming back to call her a whore. The old burn on Beth’s leg growing infected. Anything.
But not Zurich.
Not Zurich, who she’d have readily traded her happiness for. Not Zurich, not the one she’d never been able to find a shred of anger or resentment for. Not Zurich, she’d seen her grow and fall apart, not her, anyone but her.
Whiskey had been Zurich’s favorite drink. When the world had come down on them, sometimes Cat would find her, bum a drink or a whole bottle off of her, sit together and for a moment, just a single moment, think that maybe things would be alright. She drinks alone now. No Anelore to tell, no Mayrin to visit for a few moments of forgetfulness, no Ann to awkwardly exchange tearful glances with. She feels the weight settle on her shoulders and wonders if, when the rope pulled taut, it lifted from Zurich’s.
Beth came to collect her after someone sent word that Cat was drunk to the point of collapse in the bar of the Combe inn. Beth bundled her home, held up her deadweight, managed to put things together when Cat started talking about corpses and needing to go back to the graveyard. Beth threw out all the whiskey in the house, even the bottles Cat thought she’d hidden, and took Mina to the neighbors, wrapped in a blanket and questioning why her mother was screaming. Beth pushed cold hands onto Cat’s shoulders and pinned her down when she flailed and screamed in grief because this, this was not a loss she expected, it wasn’t a loss she could’ve prepared herself for, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. Beth held her when the alcohol-fueled rage turned to tears equally as drenched in whiskey, and Beth made the tea for the morning when Cat’s head would feel as if it had split in two.
Cat mumbled in the morning about a dark-skinned woman, “Raven” being the only name Beth could distinguish, Cat butchering her attempts at the real name; Zurich’s lover, she tried to explain. She had to leave the house to find her and tell her what had happened. Had to stop her from finding out from the wrong person, had to try and see if it was all a dream, if she’d finally lost her mind and Zurich would be somewhere drinking and happy. She’d been happy the last time Cat saw her. Happy and her face had lit up because she’d been in love. Happy because maybe she had made peace with herself. Happy because it was lips leaving bruises on her neck, not a rope.
Beth could hold Cat from doing a lot of things, especially as crippled as Cat was. But when the rage and the grief build up again, Beth couldn’t stop her from smashing half the glass in the house and reinjuring her back when she tried to swing the greatsword again. Beth couldn’t stop her from prowling across the upstairs floor like a caged animal, alternately blaming herself and blaming Harlyn and blaming the world for Zurich’s death. Beth couldn’t stop her from storming out the front door and slamming it behind her, with not a word on if she meant to come back.
She must have slammed the door to the Pony open, from the way the few heads turned to look at her when she came in, but the noise hardly registered. Her eyes went first to the corner by the bar and then to the top of the stairs. No Zurich in either spot. She was a little too obvious when she grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the back, but no one who saw her questioned her. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Cat wasn’t sure if she’d start screaming or crying or if there wouldn’t be anything at all in her voice, but she didn’t want to find out.
She was halfway through her second bottle of whiskey (she’d been off the stuff, but damn, it almost made her thoughts clear again) when she found herself standing in the doorway at the back of the inn. There are still nicks in the walls from what had happened, from Harlyn throwing Cat’s sword across the floor, from Cat scrambling to try and grab it, from her begging and pleading and ordering Zurich to move and let her pass and thinking that those would be her last words when the arm wrapped around her throat--
The hatred exploded inside her all at once, with a force that nearly brought her to the ground. Zurich blocked the doorway. She was the cause of all this, the reason things had gone so far off track, it was Zurich’s fault in the end. Everything had been her fault. She spun on her heel and smashed the bottle still in her hand into the wall, where Zurich had stood years past, pretending that the other woman’s head was still there, pretending that this could somehow change the past and change the present. But when she opened her eyes again, there was no Zurich and no Harlyn. Only herself.
Zurich didn’t deserve to die, she decides, watching the whiskey run down the walls. Zurich didn’t deserve to get such an easy way out, didn’t deserve to get to leave while Cat was still there. They’d been the same coin, and Cat had known it, two branches of the same path. One existing without the other was like the day existing without the night, and Zurich had not deserved death. She had deserved to suffer and live with her guilt, if she had even held any. And Cat hoped that she didn’t find peace in death. She hoped Zurich was a spirit, wandering the world until it ended, and saw everything she had done, all the wrongs she had caused. For the first time, Cat hoped Zurich never found peace, never found happiness or an escape from the world. Hating the dead, she decided as the tears turned cold and dried on her cheeks, was easier than loving them. Hatred would hold her together, but loving Zurich would only tear her apart, and that’s not a satisfaction she’s willing to give anyone, least of all a blank-eyed corpse. She’d hate Zurich until her own last day, if that’s what it would take to keep herself together.
She left the bottle shattered in the floor and made a wobbly escape through the side door, moving like a cut puppet out of the Pony and out of the city of ghosts.
