Work Text:
Ruby could see relief in everyone’s posture, when they made it onto the ship. It had been a spectacular run through the city. There was a world where she was exhilarated, where she understood the value of her life and her place in it, where she could go into the ship’s hold and lie down grateful, exhausted, anything. But in all of those worlds, Ruby had someone next to her to share it all with.
In this world, she was numb. There was something unimaginably dark hovering around the edges of her vision and she kept it at bay by shaking off her father’s arms, climbing up to the mast so she wouldn’t have to face comfort or quiet or her own dreams. In some of his more vulnerable moments, Amethar had confessed that it was sometimes tempting to escape into them. In dreams, he’d told her, he often saw his sisters. But then he had to wake up and realize they were gone, and Ruby wasn’t sure she could survive that. Not again.
So she stared into the eternal darkness of the sky, and she felt herself wishing, even beyond hope as she was: Find a way. Bring her back. Give me more time. I know you can.
A light, blinding, sputtered in front of Ruby’s eyes. She blinked and startled backwards, and in doing so understood that she was standing up. There was no wind anymore, and no stars. As her eyes adjusted, she heard a voice, so much like her own but just a touch more indignant, self-assured, saying, “I can’t believe she expects us to just stay in here.”
Ruby felt her heart thud fast in her chest. “Jet?”
A figure coalesced into being from the light. Slight, dark, with a long braid of hair whipping behind her. The figure said, “Yes?”
And so Ruby threw herself at her sister.
Jet accepted the hug for a few seconds, and then she grabbed Ruby by the shoulders and peeled her off, held her at arm’s length. “What’s going on? Are you crying?”
What was Ruby supposed to say to that? Of course she was crying. Five seconds ago she’d thought that she’d never see her sister again and now she was back in her childhood bedroom with Jet across from her, gearing up to complain about their mother like they had their entire lives. The only catch was that she wasn’t entirely sure it was real. Had she fallen asleep on the mast? Was this some kind of wishful hallucination she’d entered into to cope?
“This is going to sound crazy,” Ruby said while she wiped the snot off her upper lip, “but I need you to tell me something that you’ve never told me. Something only you would know.”
Jet squinted, confused. “There isn’t anything I know that you don’t.”
“There has to be something. Please, this is important.”
After a long moment, Jet’s eyes widened. “Do you remember when we were fourteen and you did that double backflip off the banquet table before the feast?”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, because of course she did. It was one of her fondest memories, the first time she’d really felt like she was good enough to make the circus on her own merit, and not just because she was a runaway princess and that looked good on a poster.
“I lied. You only did one flip and I just told you it was two because I thought you needed a win.” Jet played nervously with the end of her braid. “I feel like it has to be fine since you can do like, three now, right? We’re cool?”
If this had been the day before—or, it was the day before, but Ruby’s thoughts were moving too fast for that kind of logic—they wouldn’t have been cool. That kind of information would’ve shattered Ruby’s worldview, kneecapped her confidence, but now? She was just glad this wasn’t a secret that Jet had taken to the grave. “It’s fine. Or, we’ll talk about it later, but for right now we have to go.”
Even as ready as Jet had been to run out through the castle even a moment ago, she paused. “You’re scaring me a little.”
“You should be scared, Jet,” Ruby said. She could feel everything that had happened the day before on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill out, but what good would it do, telling Jet that if they followed their lead to Dulcington she would end up dead in a Rope Trick while Ruby sprinted across the bridge? And how would Ruby explain it to her, the fact that she’d run like a coward instead of staying and fighting for her sister? So she closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, and said, “I heard something on the boat on the way here.”
She told Jet as much as she could without sounding too suspicious. Ruby was sure if it had been anyone else saying it, Jet wouldn’t believe in the fact that Calroy could betray them, or that it could’ve been happening under their noses for so long. But Ruby was careful to explain how she’d heard him outlining his plan to a sympathetic dairy sailor, to walk through each of the times things had gone wrong and he’d turned up a few moments later promising to help. It really did add up, when she took the time to think about it, but Jet’s stricken insistence that he’d taught her to sword fight, that he’d been there for their entire childhoods reminded her exactly why no one had suspected him in the first place.
But Jet trusted Ruby. She was the only one who did, even when she didn’t understand her or agree with her. That was why the pain of losing her had been more than pain, had been something stronger and darker and emptier, and why Ruby finished explaining, took Jet’s hand, and ran to find her father.
“Shouldn’t we go to his rooms?” Jet hissed as they ran through the winding hallways of the castle.
Ruby peered around the corner to check if anyone was coming and then shook her head. “He’s probably on the parapets, clearing his head,” she explained, even though there was no probably. She knew he’d been on the parapet because she’d found him at the bottom and had to tell him Jet was gone. She’d seen the look on his face, like he wished whatever had thrown him into the crater had killed him, and Ruby knew something had broken in him for good.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not this time.
Ruby counted hallways and windows as she and her sister sprinted down hallway after hallway. It was lucky that she’d spent so much time practicing balance on the highest castle walls; she knew her way around them well enough that it didn’t take long to spot Amethar looking out over Candia with his hands clasped behind his back. Jet grabbed Ruby’s arm excitedly, whispered, “You were right!”
There wasn’t time to be happy. Ruby rushed out into the open air, taking a breath, ready to shout to her father that he needed to get away from the edge, he needed to run, all of them needed to get as far away as they could. She didn’t care about saving the castle, or even the kingdom. They could all get out, get onto a ship going North, go to the Great Stone Candy Mountains and figure everything out together.
Before she could say a word, Ruby watched Calroy step out of the shadows and plunge a dagger into her father’s back. The warning she’d been readying came out as a scream, and Calroy turned to look at Ruby and her sister. As he spun so did Amethar, impaled, struggling for breath, and still his eyes widened with fear as he saw his daughters frozen in front of him.
“What a shame I was interrupted. I had quite the speech planned,” Calroy said. Without ceremony, without even an ounce of effort on his face, he put another dagger into Amethar’s side, shoved him to the side, and kicked him off the parapet. “I guess it can wait, since I have something else to take care of.”
Jet lunged forward to meet Calroy, her hand already resting on Flickerish, but Ruby caught her and pulled her backwards. “We have to run!” she insisted. “He has people everywhere, he’s working with Ceresia-”
“How do you know all of that?” Calroy asked. He sounded more curious than menacing. He wasn’t even walking towards them. Ruby knew it was because he expected them to stand and fight. A different Ruby, one who hadn’t lived through this day already, would have. She’d have her bow out and a grasping arrow already notched, sure she’d be able to hit him, sure things would go her way.
This Ruby was different. She looked behind her at the castle, the hallways she’d grown up in, and knew she couldn’t disappear into them. They were crawling with people she couldn’t trust, she had no clue where Liam was, or Theobald, or even her mother. There was no time to think of another plan, not when Jet was trying as hard as she could to wrench herself out of Ruby’s grip and run at Calroy. Ruby knew there was no way she could stop her sister, so she did the next best thing: she closed her eyes, whispered a few words of power, and helped her sister sprint forward.
Calroy lifted his sword, his other hand reaching around in his cloak for what Ruby knew was another water steel dagger. She ran alongside Jet but didn’t bother to reach for Sourscratch, because at the very last second she turned and shoved Jet off the wall of the castle. Jet’s gaze whipped back towards Ruby, scared, horrified, but she was falling gently just out of the reach of Calroy’s blade. It was exactly as Ruby had planned, so much so that just before she leapt off the wall herself, she turned on her heel and tossed a wink behind her.
But the gift of time she’d been given hadn’t extended to everyone. Jet reached the ground first, was already crouched over Amethar when Ruby felt her feet settle on the grass of their grand lawn. “Dad, Jet, come on, we have to go,” she said as she walked over. “Manta Ray is in the harbor. We can get there if we hurry.”
Jet whipped around, fury etched into every line of her face. “He’s dead,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
“No, he’s not,” Ruby said, because he couldn’t be. He was in the same spot he’d been yesterday when she’d found him. He’d survived this fall before. He was supposed to survive this fall. “Did you- are you-?”
“Am I sure?” Jet finished Ruby’s sentence, although she’d never done it so cruelly before. “You stood there and watched it happen. You wouldn’t let me at Calroy. Why did you- if you knew, why did you wait so long to tell anyone? Why didn’t we kill him the second we got back to the castle?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” There was a moment when Ruby was going to tell Jet everything. The fact that she’d lived this day twice, what’d she’d been trying to stop by finding her father on the parapet, why it didn’t matter. This didn’t matter. Ruby loved her father. She looked at him, broken on the ground, and knew that she would never be the same after the loss of him.
But the reason why she couldn’t speak, the reason why she used the sounding of horns as the excuse to take Jet’s arm and drag her away from their father’s body, was that this outcome was better. This loss would devastate her, but it wouldn’t kill her.
Jet fought the entire way to the harbor. It wasn’t long before she was fighting Calroy’s soldiers instead of Ruby, but she did it all with the same fury, the same determination to make the world pay for what it had done to her family. She was a whirlwind, beautiful devastation unleashed on anyone that got in their way. It didn’t matter who joined them or what they asked of her. She threw herself on the front lines regardless, and cut a path to escape so deep and sure that it almost felt too easy as they sailed away to the Great Stone Candy Mountains.
But she wouldn’t speak to Ruby, no matter what was said. Ruby explained and apologized and tried anything she could think of, and still this time it was Jet who climbed up into the rigging to stare at the horizon. Ruby went to sleep in a hammock next to her mother knowing that it would be okay, eventually. She could try talking to Jet again tomorrow.
Ruby woke up to lantern light, and an incredulous Jet saying, “I can’t believe she expects us to just stay in here.”
“No,” Ruby said, couldn’t help saying. She spun around and took in the furniture, the canopy beds and candysilk tapestries on the walls, her sister peering at her with her head cocked to the side. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“What are we supposed to do,” Jet corrected, and Ruby took a breath. Yes, we. At least she still had her sister. And another chance to get this right, another chance to save everyone including her father.
Ruby told Jet the same thing she’d told her the day before: Calroy had betrayed them. He’d been betraying them for their entire lives, even longer. She jumped through the same hoops and made the same explanations, and then, when Jet sat down heavily on her bed, Ruby said, “We have to figure out what to do.”
“We should go find Dad. He’s probably with mom, getting yelled at. He’ll figure this out.” Jet jumped up, a hand on her sword, springing immediately into motion.
But Ruby had wished for more time. That was how she’d found herself in this situation in the first place, the wish she’d made to every star in the sky one at a time when she was as close to the sky as she could get. She’d been naive, and then she’d been impatient, and both times she’d lost someone. Not again, not this time. “We have to have a better plan than that.”
Jet paused, a hand already on the doorknob. “A plan? For what?”
“He has spies everywhere, Jet. And soldiers, and assassins, and- we have to be more careful. If Calroy is anywhere, it’s with Dad, so we should go find someone else.”
They went to see Theo. This time Ruby didn’t run through the hallways. She and Jet crept between secret passageways they’d discovered, ducking behind suits of armor and statues, making good use of every game of hide and seek they’d played as children. When they found Theo standing outside of his rooms, sword raised over the dead body of a guard, he almost cracked a smile at seeing them safe, together.
Ruby let him take charge immediately. He found Liam and their mother, led them all through the castle and onto the grounds where Amethar was waiting for them, injured but alive, and for the first time that night she let hope creep up into her chest, further and further with each step she took, one of her hands laced with Jet’s.
Then the arrow streaked through the air and pierced Theo’s neck, right in the gap between his chest plate and his helmet. He grasped at the shaft, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the fletching, and sank to his knees on the beautiful and well-kept lawn of the castle. He was saying something, or trying to, and Ruby crouched down next to him because she was the closest. She was the one who’d been using Mage Hand to hold his armor up so they could move quietly, and she was the one who closed his eyes with the barest touch of her fingertips and relayed his message to her family: “He said to keep going.”
They kept going. Ruby could feel where the hope in her chest had curdled to anger at the senselessness of it, the lack of poetry. Their bodyguard had been struck down not protecting them from an enemy but by a stray arrow launched into the dark. Amethar pulled them into a hug when they made it onto the deck of the ship, and Ruby tried to enjoy being wrapped in her father’s arms alongside her sister. She’d lost Jet, and she’d lost Amethar, and now she’d lost Theo, but it wouldn’t happen again. She could save everyone.
She went to bed early, let the rhythm of the Cola River lure her into sleep, and when she opened her eyes to lantern light and the walls of her childhood bedroom, she was ready.
It took six nights for Ruby to go back to Dulcington and the lingerie shop. She’d watched her family members die over and over again, Liam and then her mother and then Cumulous and Theo in the same night, and even one night where she and Jet had been separated from everyone during the escape and made it to the harbor with only each other. Ruby had to sneak onto a ship and hide in the cargo hold, where she’d fallen asleep wrapped around her sister and waiting for the top of the crate they were curled up in to be torn away and leave them helpless. Each time she opened her eyes back in the castle with Jet and tried again. If she could get everything right, save everyone, she was sure the loop would end.
When Jet died, everyone else had lived. That had to be the secret. And that meant she had to try and recreate that very first night, when they’d snuck into town to chase down that letter.
It didn’t matter that they hadn’t stopped to consider whether or not it might be fake, or even whether or not it was important, in the grand scheme of things, that their mother was lying to them. Ruby pretended to be as naive as she’d been on the first version of the worst day of her life, and she followed her sister out of the castle and into the night. They found Liam and whispered the plan to him in Twinspeak. When he nodded before they were even finished explaining, Ruby let herself have a second to wish they hadn’t waited until the road to Comida to let him into their hearts. And when Jet slung an arm around his shoulder as they walked by the road, Ruby thought about how nice it would’ve been to have more memories together that didn’t involve fear and grief and death.
But like all sweet things did lately, it only hardened her resolve. She would save them all. They would make more memories together. It didn’t matter how many times Ruby had to live this day; she would figure it out.
Just like in her memory of that first night, they got to the lingerie shop just as the moon swung high over the roofs of Dulcington’s shops and houses. Ruby picked the lock and they crept around downstairs. Ruby knew they weren’t going to find anything but she put on a good show of looking, waited for Jet to hiss, “There’s nothing. Let’s check upstairs.”
And then Ruby made her move: “I’ll go first. There might be another lock to pick.”
Liam protested a little bit, but he’d never been never been good at saying no to either of them, so it was Ruby who walked up the stairs first, Ruby who eased the door open and peered into the darkness of the apartment, pretending not to know what was waiting for them. Liam still managed to fire his crossbow over her shoulder—even as many times as Ruby had lived this day, she still hadn’t gotten used to the speed and surety with which he’d learned to kill—but even knowing everything that was going to happen, she still wasn’t fast enough to save everyone.
And yet, as she felt the poison of the water steel dagger spreading from the pain in her ribs throughout her body, Ruby felt like maybe this was right. Maybe this was what she’d been careening towards this whole time, swapping like for like, her life for Jet’s. She focused all her strength into her hands, murmured a word of power and felt blood drip out of the corner of her mouth as she shoved magic towards her sister. Jet shimmered and then disappeared.
Liam yelled for her to run and Ruby held her breath until she heard footsteps pounding down the stairs. The front door of the shop slammed at the same moment that Ruby felt herself dragged into the air, stillness and darkness enveloping her alongside Liam’s arms. “Come on, Ruby,” he said. She could just barely feel his hands pressing ineffectually into her side, stopping the flow of blood but doing nothing for the poison coursing through her veins.
It was shockingly disorienting, dying, and Ruby clung hard to the only thought that was clear and complete in her head: it made her happy, that in this life, she got to feel this way instead of Jet.
She locked eyes with Liam, clutched his hand with all the strength she had left, and said, quiet but clear, “Tell Jet I love her.” And then there was darkness, a small pinprick of purple light breaking through, a blue, inkstained hand reaching for hers, and everything felt right.
Ruby stumbled forward into the lamplight, her hand pressed against her side. She tripped over the bed and landed hard on her knees. The pain was easier to endure than the sight of the familiar rug, the purple weave of the fabric and the dark spread of a stain from one of the many nights she and Jet had snuck away from a state dinner with a bottle of wine and made each other laugh so hard it had spilled all over the floor.
“Shit, are you okay?” Jet said, wrapping her hands around Ruby’s arms and pulling her up to standing. “I know it’s been a while since we slept, but I didn’t think you were that tired.”
There was no response Ruby felt like she could give. Jet was right, it had been a while since she’d slept. Every time she closed her eyes she woke up back in this room, her sister in front of her, and Ruby had no idea how to save her. She’d tried everything she could think of. She’d watched everyone in her family die, had her world burned to the ground over and over, the smoldering foundations torn down brick by brick, and even in death there was nothing she could fucking do.
“I can’t believe she expects us to just stay in here,” Jet said, like she always said.
Ruby was so tired. She was only standing because her sister was holding her up, and all she wanted to do was sit down, to go down to the kitchens and steal a bottle of wine and drink it on the rug until she fell asleep. It wouldn’t matter, either. Calroy would still betray her family. Her father and Theo would still try to make it out of the castle and die trying, bleed out to save the kingdom they’d only ever tried to save. And then she would wake up in exactly the same place she was now. No plan, no hope, just a few hours of blood and muck and death before she did it all over again.
Jet let go of Ruby and watched as she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Okay, seriously. What’s going on with you? You’re acting weird.”
“I think we should do what Mom says,” Ruby said flatly.
“What?”
“I think we should stay in here like she wants us to, and let the adults handle it,” Ruby said, and once she started speaking it was like she couldn’t stop. “When have we ever made anything better? I didn’t stay in the carriage, so we almost died on the road. You spent the entire banquet with that avocado and we didn’t make any useful connections. We had to fight in the cathedral, so Dad had to focus on keeping us alive instead of helping Lapin. Mom is right. We should stay in our room and let the adults handle things.”
For a second, Jet just stared, jaw slack, but then a storm descended over her features and she took a step towards where Ruby was sitting on the bed. “That’s not fair.”
“So you’re telling me you haven’t thought any of this before?” Ruby asked, and knew she hit a nerve when Jet blinked, her eyes darting to where Flickerish leaned against the wall by the door.
“Just because I’ve thought about it doesn’t mean it’s true,” Jet said. “I’m different than I was the last time we were here, okay? We both are.”
Ruby felt herself laugh and almost surprised herself with how cruel it sounded. “So if we go into town to investigate that letter we saw, we’re being new, mature versions of ourselves? It’s so grown up to sneak into town and try to catch our mom in a lie because we’re upset she told us to go to our rooms.”
“It’s not like that,” Jet said, but her voice was quieter, less sure.
“It’s exactly like that,” Ruby responded. She looked towards the door and unlocked it with her Mage Hand. “You can do whatever you want, but I’m staying here.”
Ruby waited for Jet to walk out of the room, to pick up her sword and march out into the rest of the castle and find a way to cause trouble, but she didn’t. She sat on the bed next to Ruby, knocked their knees together. After a long moment, she said, “I think you’re wrong, but I’m not going anywhere without you.”
It wasn’t a perfect night. There was no wine, no banquet they were giddy from having escaped, and Jet was still hovering just the other side of angry. But until the shouts began, punctuated with the ring of steel on steel, they talked. It was a meandering conversation, not about anything important. Jet’s contributions were a bit clipped, and Ruby’s a bit saccharine, but somehow that made it feel more immediate, more real.
And when the guards wrenched the door open and dragged the two of them down staircase after staircase, when they were put in cells in the damp darkness of the dungeon, Jet reached out and held Ruby’s hand through the bars until they fell asleep.
Ruby had lost count of how many days she’d lived through, and then she went through the same one twice. She’d gone to find Amethar not because she wanted to save him, but because she missed him, wanted to have a conversation before things descended into the chaos she knew so well.
Then she watched as Calroy plunged a dagger into him and toss him off the parapet. She acted instinctively, cast magic and pushed Jet off the castle’s edge without thinking. It wasn’t until Jet turned to her, standing over the body of their father, and spat, “He’s dead” that Ruby realized they’d done exactly this before.
She could’ve kept going. That would’ve been the easiest thing, to look at Jet and insist they had to go. Drag her away from Amethar and down the road towards the harbor, accept her anger knowing it was only going to last until she closed her eyes and woke up back in their room, the entire night erased like it had never happened. Like so many other nights had vanished from everyone’s mind but Ruby’s own.
Instead, Ruby let her shoulders slump, let the tears fall, gave in to the fact that watching the people she loved die never got any easier no matter how many times she saw it. And she said, through her tears, “I’m stuck.”
Jet turned back to Amethar, pressed her hands to the wound in his side even though it was too late. “How could you stand there and watch it happen?”
“I’m stuck,” Ruby said, louder this time. “I’ve been stuck for a really long time.”
“What are you talking about?” Jet asked. She turned away from Amethar to look at Ruby, her hands stained red.
“I’ve been going through this day over and over again. And I know it sounds crazy, but I think it’s because”—Ruby started crying for real, then, because she was relieved to finally be telling someone but mostly because she was remembering the pain of sitting up in the crow’s nest knowing she would never see Jet again—“you died. The first time I lived this day, you died, and I asked the Sugarplum Fairy to bring you back, and I’ve been stuck in this loop ever since.”
Jet stood up slowly, her expression flowing from confusion to disbelief to concern almost faster than Ruby could keep track of it. Luckily she knew her sister likely better than she knew herself, and so she didn’t back away as Jet drew closer. “How do I know you’re not lying? Or in shock, or whatever they call it when something really bad and scary happens?”
Ruby took a deep breath, wiped her nose on her sleeve. “The first time it happened, I thought it was a dream, and then when I didn’t wake up I asked you to tell me something you’ve never told me before, something that only you would know. And you said that you lied about that first double backflip I did because you wanted to be encouraging, and I was only a little upset because even though you lied, you did it because you love me.”
“Okay, fuck,” Jet said. “I always thought I’d take that secret to my grave.”
“You did,” Ruby said without thinking. The second she realized what she’d said, she clapped a hand over her mouth, but Jet was already laughing.
“If we’re really in a time loop,” Jet said before Ruby could apologize, “then this doesn’t mean anything, right? We could go eat dessert until we’re sick and ignore everything that’s going on, or run and go swimming in the river, and it wouldn’t matter because today isn’t real.”
Ruby paused to consider it. She was still half crying, and a brownie sounded really good. “What if this is the time it doesn’t reset, though? And we were messing around and really bad things happened because of it? I know you don’t remember, but the last time I tried that you got really mad at me.”
“I didn’t have all the facts,” Jet said. She crouched and wiped the palms of her hands on the ground, leaving long, dark smears across the grass. “I’m also really motivated to believe that this is going to reset.”
Before they could decide what to do, Theo sprinted up from the gate, his armor clanking, Caramelinda behind him with her skirts gathered in her hands. Ruby let herself be checked over and held alongside her sister, and kept her mouth shut about whatever was going on with time. But when they were ready to run, Jet bent towards Ruby and whispered in her ear, “Tomorrow, we’ll do something crazy.”
Ruby sprinted from the castle with a smile on her face.
From then on, whenever Ruby opened her eyes in her bedroom, she spent ten minutes explaining the situation to Jet. At first she stuck to the story about the double backflip, but then she told Jet she was bored and asked for more secrets. There weren’t many, and after a while Ruby was sure she’d heard them all: once Jet had stumbled on their father crying in front of the statue of their Aunt Sapphria, she used to mash strawberries in her hair when she was little to try and look more like Ruby, she’d lied to everyone about what her favorite book was because she wanted to seem tough.
Then they would choose a course of action together. Even though she was facing the same Jet every night, Ruby was surprised at how many different nights she lived out through her sister’s suggestions. There were nights where they fulfilled Jet’s original promises and stuffed their faces with dessert in the kitchen, got halfway through their escapes and dove into the Cola River for a swim, but there were also nights where they followed Cumulous to the forest and watched him commune with the Sugarplum Fairy, nights where they found Caramelinda and said they were sorry and all escaped together. There was one memorable evening where they both turned invisible and killed Calroy, but before Ruby could really enjoy it she felt the now-familiar sensation of an arrow through her throat, and she woke up back in her bedroom to explain it all again.
The one thing that never happened, the thing Ruby made absolutely certain of, was that Jet never died. It wasn’t an easy task. It was a dangerous night; someone died every time. It didn’t get easier but it did get routine, and somehow it was like Jet could tell when it got to be too much. Those were the nights that she suggested they run off somewhere in the castle. They always got captured, on those nights, and Calroy or the Lady Donetta gleefully told them who hadn’t made it to the ship in the harbor, but at least Ruby didn’t have to see it happen.
And then, on a night where they’d chosen to run, Ruby reached the deck of Manta Ray’s ship with Jet’s hand curled in hers. It had been a relatively uneventful night. They’d seen some combat, had to kill a few scouts and let Cumulous drive a chariot off a cliff and kill some dogs, but she’d seen far worse. She turned around to take stock of who was left, who she’d need to mourn in the time between the ship setting sail and the inevitable resetting of the night.
She blinked, and even then it took a second to sink in. Everyone was standing in front of her.
Her father was clasping Theo on the shoulder. Liam was having a slightly nervous and stilted conversation with Cumulous. Caramelinda was straightening Jet’s collar, like anyone cared about their outfits when they were running from a coup. Ruby looked down at herself, because she was the only one that was unaccounted for in the picture she was seeing. And, yes, she was real. She was standing on the deck of the ship, the one night out of a hundred that everyone had lived.
Everyone had fucking lived.
Ruby let out a whoop and she ran for Jet. She threw her arms around her sister with such force that they lost their balance and toppled backwards onto the wood of the deck. “We’re alive,” Ruby said into Jet’s ear, and although those words meant so much more, somehow they were enough.
“We’re on the run, Ruby,” Liam said from where he was leaning against the ship’s railing. “I don’t know if we should really be celebrating.”
But Ruby just smiled up at him from the ground, her cheek pressed against her sister’s. “We lived,” she said. “We all lived. That’s the only thing that matters.”
A rumble sounded from behind Ruby, and she didn’t need to turn to know it was her father’s laugh. “You’ve got the right attitude. The fight isn’t over until we’re dead.”
“You need to rest, Sir,” Theo said.
Caramelinda cleared her throat and said, conspicuously not looking at her two daughters on the ground, “We all need to rest.”
Ruby didn’t argue. For the first time, she was sure that she’d go to sleep next to her sister and wake up in the same place, one day older and still two minutes younger. She would get to grow old, and she’d get to do it with Jet. She listened to her mother, and let the pitch and swell of the ship on the river lull her to sleep.
Lamplight. Purple carpet under her feet. Jet huffing dramatically and saying, “I can’t believe she expects us to just stay in here.”
Ruby heard her sister speak like she was at the bottom of a well. Her vision narrowed to a point, focused on the flicker of the flame her sister had just lit. The flame her sister had lit over and over again, setting into motion the same night Ruby had lived and lived and lived. How was it not tomorrow? How had she not solved it? What was the secret, if it wasn’t saving everyone, and what was the future if everyone couldn’t be in it?
The pain of Ruby’s nails digging into her palms brought her back into her body. Jet was asking if she was okay and Ruby knew she should answer. She had the speech so well practiced. She’d explain the situation, give her a secret, decide how they were going to spend the night they knew would just repeat again the next day. But she couldn’t, not when there was no way out. A labyrinth without an exit was just a cage, and Ruby was tired of being stuck.
Without a word to Jet, she turned on her heel and ran out of the room.
There was no stealth in the way Ruby tore through the hallways of the castle. She didn’t care who saw her as she sprinted across the bridge and into the woods. Follow me, she felt like yelling to the guards. If you’re loyal or if you’re not, find me and kill me, I don’t care.
It wasn’t long before the grove came into view, and then the stones and the broken teacup. Cumulous sat in front with his head bowed and his legs crossed, but as he heard Ruby approach his eyes snapped open and he turned to look at her, asked, “What are you doing here?”
Ruby didn’t answer. She flung herself on the ground in front of the stones, dug her fingers into the dirt, and turned her gaze to the sky. In the gaps between the branches she saw the same stars, the same darkness that she’d looked to the very first night on the crow’s nest. “Why am I still here?” she asked through gritted teeth. “I saved them all! What more do you want?”
There was a sweet smell and a flash of purple light. Except it wasn’t a flash, because it stayed in the air and got brighter and brighter until Ruby had to close her eyes, and even then everything was still purple and stark. She heard Cumulous gasp behind her and then go suddenly, awfully silent.
A voice sounded in Ruby’s mind, soft and sweet: I gave you what you asked for.
“I didn’t ask for this. I never would’ve asked for this. But I did it, didn’t I? Everyone lived.” Ruby only knew she was crying when she began tasting salt. “Why isn’t it over?”
Oh. Is that what you think?
Ruby clenched her hands into fists, ground dirt in each palm. “What I think? I’ve been watching my family die over and over just trying to make it stop so Jet and I-”
I cannot save Jet, said the Sugarplum Fairy.
Everything stopped except for the sound of Ruby’s heart in her ears. “What?”
You asked me to bring her back, the voice said, slower than the rapid thud of Ruby’s heart, and sweet like syrup. You asked for more time. I gave you both of those things.
“You gave me a chance to do it again,” Ruby said, but her voice sounded dumb even to her own ears. “We were all- she was supposed to live.”
I gave you time. The light disappeared, and Ruby opened her eyes to see a beautiful woman, with many eyes and many gossamer wings fluttering in the still night air. I cannot give you your sister, the fairy said, and then a clawed hand slashed forward across Ruby’s throat and there was pain, darkness, quiet.
Warm orange light, instead of cold purple. A rug under her, instead of cold, damp earth. Ruby opened her eyes and saw her sister, pouting. “I can’t believe she expects us to just stay in here,” Jet said, and Ruby watched her move around the room, the surety of her movements, the brilliance of her face in contemplation.
“I know,” she said, and she didn’t cry because she hadn’t. Not that first time. “Let’s go to Dulcington and find out what’s going on with her.”
“We’re going to get in so much trouble. There’s literally a war going on,” Jet said, and Ruby could feel her body tense with the urge to agree with her, tell her that they should crawl and hide under the bed like they had during thunderstorms when they were small.
But Ruby had lived that version of this day already, and it didn’t lead to the future. So she swallowed and said, “Jet, we can’t worry about getting in trouble. There is literally a war going on.”
A smile broke out across Jet’s face. She said, like she hadn’t since that very first night, “You’re right. It goes both ways. I’m in.”
They went and got Liam, crept into Dulcington, picked the lock to go inside the shop. Ruby tried to feel everything she had the first time around, the sugar and mischief that had been in the air for the first time in so long. Every time she caught Jet’s eye it was like the thousands of times they’d done things they shouldn’t, just to have fun. Just to see if they could. She felt a layer of ice seal over her as they stepped into the apartment upstairs, and then felt that ice crack as she heard the breath Jet let out when the dagger slammed into her side, the whimper when another one was thrust into her back.
Ruby waited as long as she could before she ran, and because she’d done this before, so many times, she knew exactly how long she had. She got a few seconds longer looking at Jet, long enough not only to see her sister beg her to run, but also to see the next thing Jet said, the thing that Ruby had missed the first time. “It’s okay,” Jet whispered, and even though that was all she could get out, Ruby knew what she meant.
Jet done a lot of living, in her eighteen years. She’d wasted plenty of the time she was given, but She’d also had so much fun. She’d loved so much, and been so loved, and Ruby had been right next to her the entire time. It wasn’t enough, Jet knew, and Ruby knew, but it was okay. As long as Ruby ran, as long as she got out, it would be okay, because all that love and all that bravery Jet had poured into the world could be carried forward by her sister.
The cool night air whipped across Ruby’s face as she ran. With each step she took she could feel time moving, not in the tight circle it had been following but a longer arc, so long it stretched out in front of her like a straight line she couldn’t see the end of. She took another step. The light of her locket ran out.
That night, up on the crow’s nest of the ship, Ruby stared into the sky, and she didn’t ask anyone for anything. She’d had so much more time with her sister, and it hadn’t been enough. All she wanted was to go back into the blood and the muck and the slaughter of that night, to see the lamplight and know that Jet was the one who had lit the wick. But the thing she’d learned about Jet, the thing that had delighted her even in the terror of each new loop of that endless day, was that her sister never lost the ability to surprise her.
Jet was always changing and changing and changing. It was what Ruby loved most about her. It was what Ruby would do, to keep that love in the world.
Ruby closed her eyes. She said goodbye. And then she climbed down the rigging to face tomorrow.