Chapter Text
[2023, Edinburgh]
As much as she doesn’t want to, Jade always comes back here: Edinburgh. To be fair, it’s been a hundred and twenty-three years since the last time she even visited, but this time she’s going to stay for good. Or at least for the next twenty years.
The city has changed. The houses and buildings are bound to look more modern, that much is to be expected, but even the Old Town looks as if the modern era has come for it as well. It’s as busy as usual, but she can’t find it in herself not to go and check her home. Her first home.
Her memories are fuzzier now, but her body still remembers how to get there. Conflicting thoughts invade her as she realizes that her house is no longer a house, but a café. In fact, the whole street is full of businesses, something that she really wasn’t expecting. Last time she was here, she couldn’t even bear the thought of visiting; she wonders when all this change happened.
Sighing, she decides to explore the Old Town and realizes that most of the places she used to frequent no longer exist. It makes her chest hurt, thinking about the times she used to play and slack any responsibility she had for the day, running around the town with… It’s been so long, and she still wishes she couldn’t remember her.
Instead of walking back to her new apartment, Jade decides to take the bus. The first route that comes takes around ten minutes to get to the National Museum of Scotland, and once she’s on it, she finds that the walk back would have probably taken her around the same amount of time as the bus did. Route 33 has three stops before reaching Shadwick Place, and after getting off, she has to walk four blocks straight until she reaches Rothesay Terrace.
“Why put a door there if it’s not going to be open?” Jade mumbles to herself as she sees that Rothesay Terrace Garden’s door is closed again. She walks around the Garden, defeated that she can’t go through it.
As she reaches Terrace, she turns to Rothesay Mews and rounds the block, entering the small parking lot behind the buildings. The number 2 on the white door somehow comforts the pain she had been feeling since leaving Old Town.
Her apartment is big; bigger than what she thought it would be for a one-bedroom flat, and it still feels too empty to her, even after buying sofas, and a dining table, and a new bed, and a library for her room. The space designated for the office remains bare, just like the box room that’s next to it. She doesn’t really own as many things for her to put in storage.
After she leaves her coat and shoes in the small walk-in closet next to the front door, Jade checks the time on her phone. She still has a couple of hours before going to work, so she decides to take a nap. Navigating around her apartment, she wonders who designed a distribution so inconvenient: the hallway is long, and it has three entryways –one to her right, which leads to the living room – dining room space; one to her left, which leads to the bathroom and if you turn to the left again, it leads to the bedroom. And one up front, which leads to the space designated to the office and the box room. Overall, too many walls for her liking.
Still, the place is hers and it is home for now; she’ll just have to get used to it.
Jade sets an alarm on her phone, rolls down the blackout blinds and face plants on the bed. Sleep does not come easy, though, and she didn’t really think it would. She tosses and turns until she finds a comfortable enough position and closes her eyes; imagines the soft touch of her mother’s hands in her hair, how she used to help her style it as best as she could. She imagines her siblings’ laugh, the way they would run around chasing her –she thinks she can still hear them call her.
She falls asleep to thoughts of her family, long gone now, and she dreams of a time when showers and apartments and cellphones did not exist. She dreams of her mother finding her in the forest floor, full of blood, over and over again; of the different ways she has died throughout the years. As the alarm wakes her up, she swears she can still hear her mother’s scream ringing in her ears.
Groaning, Jade turns off her alarm and curls into a ball, allowing herself to cry the loss of her family. She’d thought that she didn’t have any tears left, after all this time. She was wrong. Sighing, she makes herself stand up and take a shower before putting on her uniform. Carefully, Jade ties her hair, grabs her ID and gets out of her apartment.
The walk from her building to the Gallery is relatively short, taking her less than fifteen minutes with a quick pace. Inside, she leaves her bag in the staff room, checks the clock, and gets herself towards the front desk, ready to start a new round of tours. The 2:00 p.m. group is engaged enough, and she has fun giving them little History tidbits about the exhibition. After 45 minutes have passed, and the group has left, Jade takes a five-minute break to drink some water before going back to the front to meet her 3:00 p.m. group.
“Hello, everyone, my name is Jade, and I will be your guide through the Scottish Art from 1670 to 1840’s exhibition.”
As Jade starts to walk her crowd through the room, she tells them about how things were in the 1600s: she talks about stagecoaches, about the first time a camel was seen in Edinburgh, the executions of noblemen, and important details about the artists of the paintings hung in the Gallery’s walls.
“Shh.” Someone shushes and Jade turns to look back, too focused reminiscing.
Then she hears it. Two people giggling in the back of the crowd. She frowns, and asks for quietness during the tour, reminding them that the questions and comments must be reserved for the end of it.
“Sorry.” She hears, and her heart stops beating for a second. “We arrived late.”
Blue eyes. She knows those blue eyes. She knows the girl standing at the far back of the crowd; she’s holding someone’s hand, and she looks as beautiful as the day she first met her. Jade forces herself to take a deep breath and turns around, trying to continue explaining the exhibition, as she pretends that Kit Tanthalos is not behind her on a date with someone else.