“H-hello Marie,” Juno greeted quietly, her voice small in a way she hadn’t heard from herself in a long time.
Her mind was already racing, thoughts tripping over each other as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Why was she here? No, that wasn’t even the most important question. How did she know where she lived? Juno had gone out of her way to disappear, to cut ties, to make sure there was as little chance as possible that Marie could ever just show up like this.
And yet here she was.
“Well, are you going to let me in?” Marie asked, tilting her head slightly as if this was all perfectly normal. “You haven’t forgotten your manners, have you?”
“P-please leave,” Juno said, already shrinking back a step without meaning to, her body reacting before her mind could catch up.
Marie’s expression didn’t change.
“I came all this way to pick you up and this is the thanks I get?” she said, her tone light, almost amused. “Come on, your little tantrum has gone on long enough.”
Before Juno could react, Marie simply stepped forward and pushed past her, brushing against her shoulder as she walked into the house like she belonged there.
“Hey—” Juno started, but the word died in her throat.
Marie was already looking around.
“This is smaller than our place,” she said, glancing around the room with open judgment. “You look really settled in though. Doesn’t it suck to be out of the city? You’re so far away from everything.”
Juno swallowed and forced herself to breathe, her hands curling slightly at her sides as she turned back toward the open door for a moment before closing it slowly. Leaving it open had felt like a good idea for half a second, like it might make it easier for Marie to just leave again, but of course that wasn’t how this worked.
“I wanted to be out near nature,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Also… how did you find this place?”
Marie let out a soft chuckle.
It was the same laugh Juno remembered, light and pleasant on the surface, the kind of sound that had once drawn her in so easily. Now, though, all she could hear was what sat underneath it.
“It wasn’t very hard,” Marie said. “You’re not very smart. That’s why you need me, isn’t it?”
She wandered further into the room and then, without asking, sat down on the couch.
Juno flinched.
That was Niv’s spot.
“Ugh,” Marie added, shifting slightly as she leaned back. “This isn’t a very good couch, it’s so solid. Is this the best you could find?”
“It’s good enough for me,” Juno said quietly, though the words felt weak even as she said them. “How did you find me?”
Marie waved a hand dismissively.
“Sarah told me after I asked her to ask Jackson,” she explained. “He never liked me, but he likes Sarah, so that wasn’t so hard. Took a bit of nudging, but here I am. I know if you really wanted to disappear you wouldn't have told anyone.”
Fuck.
Juno’s stomach twisted.
She had cut off almost everyone when she left, tried to keep things clean and distant so nothing could be traced back to her. The fact that Marie had still managed to work her way through people like that made something cold settle in her chest.
She was going to have words with Jackson later… If she got the chance.
“Please leave,” Juno said again, a little more quietly this time.
Marie sighed as if she was the one being inconvenienced.
“Seriously?” she said. “Don’t be silly. I flew all the way here for you. I love you so much. Aren’t you going to get me a cup of coffee? You know how I like it.”
She smiled as she said it, soft and sweet and completely wrong.
Every word she spoke sounded gentle, but Juno could feel the weight behind them, the expectation, the pressure that had always been there.
“Seriously, why are you here?” Juno asked, her voice tightening despite herself. “We broke up. Why would I go back to you?”
Marie leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on her knees as she looked at her.
“Because I’m the only one who can really love you, despite your faults,” she said calmly. “I know you love me too. Coffee, please? I’m tired, and you chose to live in the middle of nowhere. Can’t you see all the effort I put in for you?”
Juno’s jaw tightened.
There were a hundred things she wanted to say in that moment. She wanted to shout at her, to tell her to get out, to tell her exactly what she had done and how much it had hurt. She wanted to wipe that smile off her face, to finally push back in a way she never had before.
Instead, her body moved on its own.
She turned and walked into the kitchen.
And she started making the coffee.
She stood there in the kitchen for a long moment after finishing the coffee, her hands resting lightly against the counter as she stared down at the mug. The steam curled up lazily from the surface, and for a few seconds, she didn’t move at all.
Her chest felt tight.
There was a pressure building behind her eyes that she knew all too well, that awful mix of frustration and fear and anger that never quite came out the way she wanted it to. She wanted to cry, to scream, to march back in there and tell Marie to fuck off and never come back. She wanted to do all the things she had imagined doing a hundred times over when she had first left.
But standing there now, with Marie just a room away, all of that felt harder than it should have.
Juno swallowed, forcing the feeling down, and picked up the mug.
She walked back into the living room slowly, each step feeling heavier than the last, and placed the coffee down carefully on the table in front of the couch.
“Thank you,” Marie said pleasantly, as if nothing at all was wrong.
Then she patted the space beside her.
“Why don’t you sit down next to me and we talk things out, like usual.”
Juno’s stomach twisted at that.
Talking things out. She knew exactly what that meant. It meant going in circles until somehow everything became her fault. It meant apologising for things she didn’t do, or things that had been twisted into something else entirely. It meant walking away feeling smaller than she had before.
She had left.
She had escaped.
The thought that it might not matter, that Marie could just show up and pull her right back into it, made something in her chest tighten painfully.
Was there nowhere she could go?
“Sit.”
The word came sharper this time.
Juno looked at her.
“No,” she said.
Marie’s expression shifted slightly, her brows drawing together.
“Excuse me?”
Juno forced herself to hold her gaze.
“No,” she repeated, her voice a little steadier now. “Drink the coffee, or don’t, then get out. Get out of my house and never come near me again.”
For a moment, Marie just stared at her.
Then she frowned, the sweetness in her expression faltering just a little.
“Oh, stop being so stubborn,” she said, her tone taking on a familiar edge.
Juno hesitated.
Every instinct in her body was telling her to back down, to smooth things over before it got worse, to fall back into the same patterns she had followed for years. It would have been so easy to just sit down next to her, to pretend this was normal, to let the conversation go the way it always did.
Instead, she moved.
She walked past the couch and lowered herself into the chair across from her.
It was a small thing, barely anything at all, but it felt like the only way she could push back right now.
Marie’s frown deepened slightly, but she didn’t comment on it.
She picked up the coffee instead, taking a slow sip as she watched Juno over the rim of the mug.
“So,” she said after a moment, as if they were discussing something completely ordinary, “when are you moving back in with me?”
“What?” Juno said, her voice shaking now, the strain finally starting to show through. “Haven’t you been… haven’t you been listening? I have asked you to leave. I want you gone.”
Marie didn’t answer her.
Instead, she paused mid-sip and sniffed the air lightly, her nose wrinkling just a little as her gaze drifted around the room again.
“Why does it smell like dog in here?” she asked, as if that was the only thing worth addressing.
Juno blinked, thrown off completely.
“What?”
“Did you get a pet?” Marie continued, still ignoring her. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. You’ll have to get rid of it when you move back to Auckland with me.”
Juno felt something in her chest twist sharply.
“Why won’t you listen to me?” she asked, her voice cracking as the tears she had been holding back finally started to spill over. “I keep telling you to go, to leave, to never show up here again! Why won’t you listen? Why have you never listened!”
Marie let out a small, almost amused sigh.
“Because I know you don’t really mean that,” she said calmly. “You’re just having a rebellious phase.”
Something in Juno snapped.
She pushed herself up out of the chair so suddenly it scraped loudly against the floor, her hands clenching into fists at her sides as she faced her, her expression furious even as tears streaked down her cheeks.
“I’m thirty fucking six!” she snapped, her voice rising in a way it hadn’t before. “I’m not some doll you can just order around! Get out, get out before I call the pigs! Get out of my life and never show up again!”
For a split second, there was silence, then Marie stood.
She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t argue, didn’t even look particularly angry. She simply stepped forward, moving around the table with slow, deliberate steps.
The sound of the slap was sharp and sudden, cracking through the room.
Juno’s head snapped to the side with the force of it, and for a moment everything seemed to blur. She brought a hand up to her cheek, pressing her palm against the spot where it throbbed, her breath catching as the shock settled in.
“Get over yourself and stop being so entitled,” Marie said, her tone cool and dismissive, as if nothing of consequence had just happened. “I swear you’re always like this.”
Then, from behind her, something else filled the room.
A low, deep growl, heavy and resonant, carrying a weight that made the air itself seem to become far heavier.
Both of them turned toward the sound.
Niv stood at the entrance to the living room.
She was still, her posture tense, her golden eyes fixed entirely on Marie as that growl continued to rumble from her chest.
“Get out, stupid head,” she said, her voice low and dangerous.
Then there was a crash.
Juno turned just in time to see Marie stumble backwards, losing her footing as she fell hard onto the floor, her composure breaking completely as she scrambled to put distance between herself and the towering figure in the doorway.
“Monster,” she breathed, her voice thin with fear.
“Get out, bad human,” Niv growled again, taking a slow step forward. “No one hurt Juno. Get out.”
Juno had never seen Niv like this before.
There was something undeniably frightening about her in that moment, something primal and dangerous that set every instinct on edge, and yet, instead of fear, all Juno felt was a deep, overwhelming sense of safety.
Marie’s eyes darted around wildly for a second before she spotted the sliding door. She scrambled to her feet and rushed toward it, her hands fumbling with the lock in her panic. It took her a second too long to get it open, and when she finally did, she practically threw herself through it.
A high, panicked scream echoed back from outside as she ran.
And just like that, she was gone.
Juno stood there for a moment everything suddenly went quiet, her body still tense, her hand pressed against her cheek where the sting hadn’t quite faded yet. The silence that followed felt strange, almost unreal after everything that had just happened, like the house itself was trying to settle back into something normal again.
Then the tension gave out all at once.
She stumbled back a step and dropped heavily into the chair behind her, the strength going out of her legs as she let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Her hands trembled slightly as she lowered them into her lap, her thoughts still catching up with everything that had just unfolded.
Niv was at her side almost immediately.
She moved quickly, crossing the room in a few long strides before dropping down beside the chair, one knee hitting the floor as she leaned in close, her expression tight with concern as she looked up at Juno.
“Did I… do right thing?” Niv asked, her voice uncertain in a way that didn’t match the way she had just been moments ago.
Juno blinked, then let out a small, breathy laugh that carried more relief than humour.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice still a little shaky. “Yeah, you did. Thank you.”
Niv’s expression shifted immediately at that, but instead of relaxing, it hardened.
“She hit you,” she snarled, her lip curling as a low growl rumbled faintly in her chest again. “Bad human. Bad, bad, bad.”
“She is,” Juno agreed quietly.
Niv’s ears flicked back slightly as she glanced toward the door Marie had fled through, then back to Juno.
“Why you have bad human in den?” she asked, clearly not understanding.
Juno sighed softly, leaning back into the chair.
“She forced herself in,” she explained.
Niv frowned deeply at that, her expression turning almost offended.
“Bad manners too,” she said, shaking her head. “Should know. Do not force into other’s den. It’s bad. She is stupid head.”
Juno huffed out a small laugh despite everything, the sound coming a little easier this time.
“More than you?” she asked.
Niv straightened slightly, clearly thinking about that for a moment before nodding with firm conviction.
“She make me look like smart head!”
That got a proper laugh out of Juno, the tension in her shoulders easing just a little more as she reached over and lifted a hand to scratch Niv gently behind the ears.
“Because you are a smart head,” she said softly.
Niv leaned into the touch without hesitation, the earlier anger melting away into something much calmer as she stayed close at her side.
“I think… I think I just want a quiet day,” Juno said after a moment, her voice softer now, like she was still trying to steady herself after everything that had just happened. She leaned back into the chair and rubbed at her face, letting out a slow breath as she tried to gather her thoughts into something manageable. “I’ve still got some venison left, I could grill something up for us. Maybe skewers. Well, skewers for me, I want my vegetables.”
She let out a weak, uneven laugh at that, more from habit than actual amusement.
Niv tilted her head slightly as she listened, her expression easing now that Juno seemed a little more settled.
“Oh, um… so no more visitors today?” she asked, a hint of uncertainty creeping back into her voice.
Juno shook her head almost immediately.
“I think I am very thoroughly peopled out,” she said, letting out another small breath. “I’d really like it if you stayed. You make me feel safe.”
Niv’s posture shifted at that, something warm and protective settling into her expression as she nodded.
“Okay. Understand,” she said. “Will tell the Mother to leave.”
Juno blinked at her, the words taking a second to actually register.
“Wait,” she said, sitting up a little straighter. “Your mum is here?”
“Close,” Niv replied, as if that was a completely normal thing to say. “Heard shouting, went ahead.”
Juno dragged a hand down her face.
“Fuuuck,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay. Okay. Right. Sure.”
She pushed herself up out of the chair again, her legs still feeling a little unsteady, but at least holding her weight this time.
“Go get her,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the door. “I’m going to splash some water on my face and… I don’t know, try to look like a functioning human being. Should I come out, or…?”
“Yes,” Niv said with a firm nod. “Best if leave den. Good manners.”
Juno let out a quiet groan as she turned toward the bathroom.
“Okay,” she said. “What a fucking day to meet the in-laws.”