Chapter 7: The Shepherd's Pie Pact
The cafeteria lights had dimmed to a sickly yellow, buzzing like trapped insects. Most of the room was cavernous dark, chairs stacked on tables, the floor mopped in long, sour-smelling stripes. They’d taken a table in the lone pool of light near the service counter, an island in the emptiness.
Y/n shoved the pile of peas to the far edge of her plate with surgical precision.“See? A war crime. They have the texture of boiled snot.”
Amber poked at her own serving, the gravy already forming a skin.“You’re not wrong.” She took a bite. It was salty, lukewarm, somehow both mushy and granular. It was also, bizarrely, perfect.Y/n watched her, then grinned.“Told you. Not terrible.” She leaned back, the plastic chair creaking under her weight. The tattoos on her forearms shifted in the low light—a geometric wave, a line of script Amber couldn’t read.“So. Trashy romance novels, huh?”
A flush crept up Amber’s neck. She’d let that slip in the hallway.“It’s just… predictable. You know exactly what you’re getting.No surprises.”
“Unlike life.”
“Unlike life,” Amber echoed, almost smiling.
“What’s the best one?”
“Oh god.” Amber laughed, a real, startled sound that echoed in the empty space. “There’s one called ‘His Rebel Kiss.’ The cover has a man with a shirt literally aflame. It’s… profound in its commitment to nonsense.”
Y/n snorted.“I’m more of a graphic novel person.Stuff with messed-up mythologies. Heavy on the art, light on the shirtless firefighters.” She rolled up her sleeve, revealing more of the tattoo on her bicep—a stark, minimalist mountain peak. “Got this after my first big comp.The artist in Revelstoke had a broken hand.Whole thing shook. Hurt like a bitch.”
“It’s crooked,” Amber observed, without thinking.
“Yep.” Y/n’s grin widened.“Just like the real one. I like it better that way.”
Amber looked from the tattoo to Y/n’s face. The easy ownership of it, the flaw as a feature.It was alien. She looked down at her own hands, at the unmarked, pale skin, the faint white line of a long-healed stress fracture on her wrist. A receipt for pain, nothing more.The conversation drifted. Y/n talked about a halfpipe in Japan that was pure ice, how the board had sung a different note on it. Amber mentioned the brutal elegance of a triple axel, the physics of it, the exact torque required. They weren’t talking about pressure, or fathers, or notebooks.They were talking about the feel of things.The craft.
It was Y/n who circled back, her voice dropping, softer.“That thing you said. About the furnace and the sword.”
Amber tensed.
“If the furnace shut off,” Y/n asked, not looking at her, tracing a pattern in the condensation on her plastic cup. “If you just… walked out of the heat. What would Amber Glenn do?”
The hum of the fridge behind the counter grew louder.The question wasn’t about hobbies.It was about existence.
Amber stared at the congealed gravy. The words came from a place so deep and dark they felt like they belonged to someone else.“I’d disappear.”
It hung there.A confession. The truth of a life built on a single, narrow point.
Y/n didn’t speak for a long time. Then she looked up, and her green eyes were clear, focused, holding Amber’s with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. “Don’t.”
The word was simple.Absolute.Amber’s breath caught.
“I’d miss you,” Y/n said, her voice rough. Then, a faint, lopsided smile touched her lips, cutting the gravity.“Or, you know.I can join.”
The world tilted. The fluorescent buzz faded to a distant whine.Amber tried to parse it.A joke. A rescue line thrown into a dark sea.A promise.She didn’t know. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs.Before she could form a syllable, Y/n pushed her chair back. The screech of plastic on linoleum was shockingly loud.“It’s late. You’ve got blades to sharpen tomorrow.” She stood, collecting their trays, her movements fluid and deliberate, breaking the spell.But the air was still charged, thick with what had been said.
They walked back through the labyrinth of corridors, the silence between them now a different creature—not empty, but full, vibrating with a new frequency. At the junction where her hallway split towards the athletes’ residences, Amber stopped.“Y/n.”
Y/n turned, hands in her pockets, a question in her raised eyebrows.
“Thank you. For the…” Amber gestured vaguely, at the cafeteria, the conversation, the rescue.“The diplomatic relations.”
A real smile, then.Warm and unguarded. “Any time, Glenn.” Y/n took a step backward, then paused. Her eyes tracked down to Amber’s hands, clenched at her sides. “For the record,” she said, her voice so low Amber almost felt it more than heard it.“Swords are overrated. You ever seen a good knife?Just a simple, sharp thing.Useful for everything. Belongs to no one.”
She gave a small, two-fingered salute and turned, her figure dissolving into the shadowy hall.
Amber stood there long after the sound of her footsteps had faded, staring at her own hand, at the white line on her wrist. In the sterile quiet, she could still feel the ghost of that look, the weight of the word.
Don’t.