Patricia looked up at Joy's quiet voice. "I do?"
Joy was staring at Patricia like she'd seen her father come back from the dead. Slowly, her hand moved up to the outer corner of her eye, her pink painted fingernails standing out next to the dark brown of her eyes. Patricia copied the motion, then pulled out her compact. In the outer corners of her eyes were a few soft beginnings of crow's feet wrinkles. By force of habit, she smiled, wide and with all her teeth, turning her head slightly to the side to get a better look at them. Joy was smiling too, but her lip was starting to tremble.
"I told my mother I smiled enough." She said triumphantly, snapping the mirror shut and pocketing it. "We should call Piper and see if she's caught up to me."
"She's two hours younger." Joy gave a weak, wet laugh, then hurriedly sniffled.
"Joy?" Patricia's eyebrows furrowed with worry as she got off the barstool, the beautiful, perfect wrinkles on her eyes crinkling. She placed her hands on Joy's shoulders, her right on the back of Joy's right, and her left just on top of her shoulder. "What's wrong? Joycie?"
"You're so beautiful." Joy croaked out, her voice cracking. She swallowed around the heavy lump stuck in her throat. "Baby, I don't have wrinkles."
Patricia pulled back slightly to give one of her incredulous, perfectly judgmental looks. One that would make Joy laugh, and her heart stop beating so hard in her chest. Where the room would calm, and she'd suggest getting wine, and then watching Girls in their comfy pajamas. Where they'd have breakfast the next morning after falling asleep entangled in each other's limbs on the couch. Joy would look up at Patricia and say, "Don't take the girls to school", and instead they'd go to the playground and have a picnic for lunch.
Her eyebrows were wrinkled, and that was more beautiful, and Joy almost burst into tears again, because one day there would be creases in the furrow, and then lines on her forehead. "You're upset because I'm visibly aging faster than you?" She asked aloud, voice incredulous, like she couldn't believe the question needed to be asked. But even still, there was a hint of amusement always hidden in her tone, and the corners of her mouth twitched upward.
"Baby look at me." Joy pleaded, eyes shining. She held her arms out, pulling away from Patricia to take a step back and gesture down her torso. She brought her hands to her chest and leaned forward, emphasising. "Look at me."
"What about you?" Patricia demanded, sliding her hand on Joy's neck and under her ear, resting on the side of her neck. "You're beautiful. Your eyes, God Joycie, they were all I could see each night when you were gone. What could possibly be wrong with you?"
Joy let out a sharp, cut-off sob, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth, her shoulders shaking. "When they were packing up my stuff, they accidentally grabbed the purple hair extension you were wearing, that night you fell asleep in my bed when we were watching The Notebook." She said instead of answering. A tear rolled down her face and she looked down. "I slept with it under my pillow every night until the prom."
Patricia slowly moved some of Joy's hair behind her ear. "I would see you, from that last day when you were looking at Fabian, all I could remember was thinking about how I wished you'd just look up already." Patricia's words made Joy let out a shaky, sobbed laugh. "I took that photo, and after you disappeared-I cut Fabian out and zoomed it in on you so I could look at you every time I opened my phone."
Joy pouted, wrapping her arms around Patricia's neck and hiding her face in Patricia's shoulder for a moment. "Patricia." She paused, then slowly pulled away again. "Look at me." She wiped her hands across her cheeks to clear off her tears. "At that last Christmas party we all went to, Fabian was trying to hide grey hairs because his panic attacks made him get a few early."
"People get old, Joy, that's a good thing." Patricia awkwardly half-laughed. "You said it was beautiful. After everything everyone's been through-everything the two of us have been through-getting old, it's incredible. I've thought I was going to die more times than any teenager should. You died, Joycie."
"And now look at me. Compared to everyone else." Joy pointed to one of the pictures on the walls from a few years ago, when they were in college. She looked perfectly identical.
Patricia paused to look at all the pictures on the wall, all the images of their family slowly growing, with Joy always lagging behind. "So you're aging gracefully." She said finally. "You look a few years younger than everyone else, you'll catch up."
"After everything that happened. Everything we know." Joy said insistently. "You think this is just a coninsidence? The last time something was a coninsidence, I was coninsidentally born on the same day as some random American girl and then while she got to "Erika it up" at the palace sleeping in my bed, I was Anneliese locked up in a mineshaft!"
"…Huh that movie really does track for your lives." Patricia noted mutely. "Okay. If it will make you feel better, I'll call the gang and we can bring it up together. We'll figure out what's going on. The last few problems we've had were over pretty quickly because we all just sat and talked everything out. Will that make you feel better?"
"…Maybe." Joy admitted quietly. "A little."
Despite Patricia's promise, it doesn't exactly just take a text to get eight members of a highschool trauma-bonding club together. After a week of texting back and forth, Mara, Fabian, and Nina sat in the Soetergraven-due to Patricia's mother and Joy's father, neither had taken each other's last name, and had instead, for reasons unknown even to them, picked the name Soetergraven when they married-living room.
"-sure it's not just that you've been taking really good care of yourself and aren't showing sighs of aging?" Fabian was in the middle of trying to rationalize again.
Joy shot him a level look. "Victor was practically a hundred while he was running Anubis, so you'll forgive my immediate concern about a lack of aging."
"Alfie still looks pretty young, and Amber." Nina reasoned, then immediately looked to the ceiling as she corrected, "Though Amber really does use a lot of skincare and natural remedies."
"It's not natural!" Joy said with exasperation. She weakly threw her hands up before dropping them back down to the couch. "It's-It's the Tear."
Instantly, Fabian and Nina looked sick to their stomachs. "Oh." Nina said numbly.
Mara looked between the group slowly, before hesitantly confirming, "The Tear of Gold. That brought you back to life."
"It brought me back to life." She repeated insistently. "I look young. Alfie looks young. What's the common denominator?"
"Alfie had the elixir after that night in the cellar," Nina confirmed quietly.
"But-How?" Patricia demanded. "Alfie hasn't aged at all, Joy has!"
"Well…" Fabian looked down in thought. "It was different methods. Rufus looked younger than Victor, because he took the elixir more frequently. Maybe the Tear does something different. The mythological Fountain of Youth was said to restore youth, but in depictions, that's frequently shown as returning a person to a baby. The tear is an ingredient in the elixir, so maybe it does something in between?" He looked between the four girls to see if they were following.
"So maybe it restores the youth, and keeps the same appearance in the body." Nina finished with a nod. "You'd keep aging at first, because most of the aging is done in childhood."
"Puberty tends to stop at around thirteen to fifteen in girls, or two years after you have your period." Mara reasoned. "If the Tear reset your internal aging when you were fifteen, your aging would slow exponentially after you turned about twenty-five."
"Wait, wait, wait-" Joy choked on a sob, holding out her hand. "Do you mean to tell me that right now, my-my b-body-?" She got choked up again and cut off.
"She's only physically twenty-five?" Patricia repeated, and Joy started to cry. Patricia opened her arms, and Joy tucked herself into her wife's side, crying into her shoulder.
"So…in addition to aging slower physically…" Fabian shifted awkwardly. "Joy literally died when she-" His breathing hitched, and his eyes shone as he fought back tears. "-took that bolt. For-For me. The Tear, it-it brought her back. It reset everything. It's like those first fifteen years never happened."
"Same for Alfie." Nina said slowly, reaching out to grab her husband's hand and interlace her fingers with his. She turned and added for Mara, "He really did have a small amount of the real Elixar Of Life, that nurse in Victor's cult just faked the results." Then she looked back to Joy. "It's why you two are aging more slowly. You have at least fifteen more years than everyone else."
Joy let out a loud sob, clutching Patricia's shirt. "That's why I was crying!" She finally was able to explain. "Everything that happened to us, me and Alfie, everything we went through in school-everything we had to do-none of it mattered. It's just been erased!"
"Hey," Patricia said sharply. "That's not true at all, Joy."
"You know it is!" Joy argued. "It's all you've been saying, because it's true! You're getting wrinkles, Fabian is going grey-"
"It's like three white hairs, how does everyone notice them?" Fabian started muttering to himself, messing with his hair in an attempt to hide the strands of white hidden in the black.
"I think they make you look very attractive," Nina assured in a low tone, patting her husband's hands and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
"We all went through literal hell, all of us thought we were going to die at least once for about a dozen separate reasons-" Joy started to hyperventilate. "And now you're aging. You're moved on from it. It's growing away from you. And for a while-I thought it finally was for me." Joy slumped down, and Patricia wrapped her arms around her again.
"You've still changed." Mara pointed out. "Your aging should resume later and then continue on as normal. Alfie looks completely the same as when we graduated."
Joy remained silent, but the look on her face was anything but calmed. "I just…wanted it to all be behind me, and I wanted-" She stopped short and looked to Patricia.
The room was silent for a moment longer until Nina stood. "Why don't we give you some privacy?" She suggested. "We'll go to that museum and then meet up later?"
"Sounds perfect, thanks Nina." Patricia said appreciatively, standing so the two girls could hug. Joy stood and gave Fabian a silent hug, then moved to hug Nina as Patricia hugged Mara.
"See you later this evening." Mara promised as she hugged Joy. "But I promise everything will turn out alright."
Patricia and Joy waved the three off at the door, then drifted into the kitchen. Patricia started heating up the kettle for tea, and rummaging around in the pantry.
"This is horrible." Joy said quietly. "All that time just erased." She stood despondently, eyes watering with more tears as Patricia made up a plate with crackers and cheese, grabbing a small handful of grapes to wash.
"It's just fifteen years, right?" She tried to reason, setting everything down on the table as the kettle began to whistle. "It could be worse. I mean, the Tear was a base component in the Elixar, it could only be cried from the mask of Anubis, which could only be worn by the pure of heart, and knowing the rest of the stuff we delt with, probably could only cry the tears with someone like Nina wearing it. It could have made you completely-" Seeing the devastated look on Joy's face, she stopped dead in her tracks, the kettle frozen in her hands above the cups.
"I don't want fifteen years without you!" Joy yelled, and she started to cry again, her face falling as she hugged her sides tightly. "I never even wanted to go one-"
Patricia hurriedly put the kettle back down and wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, holding her as tightly as she could. "Joy." She said lovingly, but stopped there.
"None of this ever would have happened if I was just born a day late." Joy bit out, voice bitter and full of melancholy. "None of this would have happened if they didn't think I was Chosen! I'd be normal. I wouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night screaming or waking up to you screaming or waking up to the news that the two of us were talking fucking backward in our sleep!"
The two sank down to the cold tile of the kitchen floor, and they leaned to the side, resting against the cabinets. Patricia kept holding Joy's hands, keeping her fingers interlaced with hers.
"I never would have left." Joy said quietly. "If I had never left you wouldn't have a reason to look for me. If you hadn't been looking for me, you never would have needed a private fucking investigator. You never would have met-"
"Joy, we were kids." Patricia said sternly, cutting her off. "It's not your fault you were born on the seventh! It's their fault! You're right Joycie, it is their fault because they were the ones that did all that shit to us. They were the ones that didn't care."
"Okay, well, so what?" Joy asked desperately. "It was all their fault, so what? It's already done. Eventually, someday, everyone is going to be gone, and I'm going to be alone. One day you'd be gone, and I'd be alone again-"
Patricia grabbed her face and pulled her closer, kissing her even as Joy hiccupped. When she pulled away, Joy sniffled and wiped at her face again.
"I know it doesn't seem like much, but God, Patricia-" She let out a little sob, grabbing Patricia's hands again and holding them like Patricia was about to disappear. "I can't be alone again. I get shaky still when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Or when I lose sight of you in a crowded place. My heart stops. It just stops."
"Joy." Patricia breathed out. She stared at her wife for a long time in silence, taking in her still youthful, yet achingly haunted features. And then slowly her eyes began to glint, and her eyebrows began to furrow, as Patricia Marie Williamson recalled one slight detail she had buried in her subconscious over a decade ago. "…I know how to fix it."
One conversation with Nina and Fabian and a week later, Patricia stood outside the doors to Amun. She rifled through a ring of keys before holding out the one to unlock the school's front door. Noticing the slight smile on her wife's face, she turned and asked, "What?"
"Just like when we were kids." Joy said quietly, but her voice was fond. "Stealing Victor's keys. Breaking into things we shouldn't with Alfie and Jerome."
"Not really stealing when they're lent to you." Patricia rolled her eyes with a grin. She fit the keys into the door and pushed it open. The school was ominously empty in the summer, and as Patricia walked down the halls she'd left behind all those years ago, she did admittedly get a chill.
It took another ten seconds to find the key to the door to the girls' bathroom. Joy wandered over to the small tile on the wall with a bullseye sticker, and traced a nail down the blue and red circles.
Patricia turned into the very first stall, and lifted the heavy porcelain lid. Bobbing in the water, just where she'd hidden it, was a small bottle that contained what was likely the last ever amounts of the elixir of life.
Grabbing it out of the water, the first thing Patricia does is carry the bottle over to the sink and wash it with a copious amount of soap. The water in the tank might have been clean, but now faced with the bottle once more she was taking no chances. Then for extra measure, she takes off the cap and pours everything out into a small paper cup, throwing the original bottle away.
"That's it?" Joy noted, looking down at the golden liquid resting in the cup.
"Almost exactly the same amount Alfie took." Patricia confirmed with a nod. "I love you, Joy."
"I love you, Patricia." Joy breathed out.
Patricia slowly raised the cup to her lips. Pausing, her right hand moved up to cover her eye, and Joy's did the same.
