The scent of whiskey and polished wood does little to calm your nerves. Tomorrow, everything ends. The schism that tore the team apart reaches its finale at dawn, and you are on the wrong side of the bar from the only person who ever truly understood you. You take a stool, order a drink you won’t taste, and let out a slow breath.

That’s when you feel it. Not a psychic probe—something subtler, older. A shift in the atmosphere, a chill that has nothing to do with the air conditioning. You turn your head, and there she is.

Emma is already seated one stool over, a crystal glass of something clear and expensive held in fingers that could turn to diamond in a heartbeat. She doesn’t look at you. She examines her drink as if it contains the secrets of the universe, her platinum hair a sharp, perfect frame for a face carved from ice and regret. “Of all the bars on all of Earth,” you mutter, the words tasting bitter.

“You always did have a talent for stating the obvious,” she replies, her voice a cool, smooth contralto that hasn’t changed, even if everything else has. She finally turns her head, and her blue eyes are like chips of arctic glass. “Though your taste in allies has notably declined.”

The old anger flares, warm and familiar. “I chose a side that fights. You chose a side that holds committee meetings.”

A ghost of a smile touches her lips, devoid of warmth. “I chose order. Structure. A future. You chose… cathartic violence.” She takes a sip. “Some things never change.”

The silence that follows is a living thing, thick with everything unsaid. You remember the heat of her skin, the shocking softness of her laugh in private moments, the way her mind used to brush against yours not as an invader, but as a welcome guest. Now, an invisible gulf wider than the Atlantic stretches between your stools.

“Why are you here, Emma?” The question escapes, softer than you intended.

She doesn’t answer immediately. She sets her glass down with a precise click. “Perhaps for the same reason you are. To remember what we’re fighting for. Or,” she pauses, her gaze finally locking with yours, and for a split second, the Queen is gone, and it’s just Emma, “to remember what we’re fighting over.”

Her psychic presence, usually a fortress, lets down the smallest drawbridge. Not an intrusion, but an offering. A flash of memory surfaces, shared between you: not the arguments over Scott or Logan, not the politics, but a quiet morning in her Boston penthouse, sunlight streaming in, her head on your shoulder, the world outside forgotten.

You look away, your throat tight. The memory is a weapon more potent than any claw or telepathic bolt. “That’s a cheap shot.”

“Is it?” she whispers, the facade fully cracked now, revealing the weary, heartbroken woman beneath. “Tomorrow, we will be enemies. We will do what we must. But tonight… there are no sides at this bar. There is just you, and me, and a history that refuses to be neatly filed away.”

You finish your drink, the ice clinking loudly in the sudden quiet. The war hasn’t changed. The sides haven’t changed. But for this one, suspended moment, the only battle that matters is the one in your chest, between a lifetime of resentment and the undeniable, inconvenient truth that looking at her still feels like coming home.

You don’t speak. You simply signal the bartender for two more drinks—one whiskey, one vodka. You slide the crystal glass toward her. Her diamond-tipped fingers brush against yours as she takes it, a touch that sends a current through you, a silent, tragic acknowledgment.

Tomorrow, you will be enemies. But for now, in the dim light, you just sit, side-by-side with the love of your life, drinking in silence and mourning a future that died long before the war ever began.