Chapter Text
EXT. STUDIO PARKING LOT
After two blocks, her pace frayed into a full sprint, Ava reached the edge of the lot—panting, burning, every breath scouring her throat raw. Her limbs thrummed with the residue of panic, with the kind of urgency that knew no destination, only the need to move. The studio gates loomed ahead, wide and washed in sterile floodlight, the contours unmistakably familiar. But something clung to the air—something misaligned, a wrongness humming just beneath the surface. Her badge met the reader with a sharp, indifferent beep. The gate stayed still. Unmoved. Cold. Refusing.
Ava tried again and was met with the same result.
She veered toward the side desk, raising her badge with urgency toward the woman behind the thick pane of security glass. The same one always stationed there on bleary-eyed mornings and long, silent nights—a woman with a soft voice, eyes that rarely judged, and a dented travel mug plastered with fading equality stickers that had held their place longer than most shows on the lot.
“Hey, I’ve got to get back on the lot,” Ava said, breath catching. “My badge isn’t working.”
“Okay,” the woman replied, tapping calmly at her keyboard, no hint of concern. Ava stood there trembling, sweat clinging to her back beneath the blazer, strands of hair pasted to her temple. Her heart pounded so hard she thought the guard might hear it.
The rhythmic clatter of keys halted midstream. “Sorry,” she said gently. “You’re not in the system.”
Ava blinked. “Yes, I am. You know me. I work here.”
The woman offered a small, pained wince. “Apparently, you don’t anymore.”
It hit with the weight of something delayed, the kind of blow that doesn’t register right away—only settles in once it’s too late to brace.
"Oh my god," she whispered to herself.
Ava stared at nothing, brain spinning, unable to anchor the moment to anything real. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Her voice wavered as she pointed behind the glass. “Do you have a television in there?”
The woman nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“Can you—can you switch it to Late Night with Deborah Vance? I just— I need to see what’s going on.”
The guard gave her a curious look—half confusion, half concern—but there was a warmth in it, too, something soft and familiar. She clearly liked Ava, even if the system didn’t.
“Sure,” she said, her smile small but kind.
She reached for the remote, flipped through channels until the screen cut to black, then swelled with music—sharp brass and crisp percussion, the unmistakable intro of Late Night with Deborah Vance. Ava’s stomach twisted. That sound had once felt like home, like proof of belonging. Now it felt foreign. Icy.
She leaned in toward the screen as the opening visuals began to roll, heart hammering loud enough to drown them out. Her reflection hovered faintly over the flicker of the broadcast—eyes wide, face pale, lips slightly parted.
The screen burned in Ava’s periphery, static electricity ghosting against her skin like a shiver she couldn’t shake. The applause was deafening, even through the tinny TV speakers. She watched Deborah step into the light, watched the crowd rise for her, all teeth and black lace and hunger.
The shimmer of the studio lights caught in her hair as she moved—poised, radiant, almost mythic. Ava couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t blink. Deborah had always known how to enter a room, but this—this was something else entirely. Like watching someone step into their final form.
“Please welcome your host, Deborah Vance!”
The cheers cracked like thunder.
Ava’s throat tightened, her stomach flipping with something sharp and unplaceable. None of it registered. It felt like she was watching a simulation—Deborah, poised and sparkling from the inside-out, perfectly lit, perfectly adored, as if the world hadn’t just dropped out beneath Ava’s feet hours ago. Her mind struggled to reconcile the woman on the screen with the woman who had let her go without ever saying the words, and moreover, with the woman who promised Ava that she was Deborah's voice.
“Welcome to Late Night with Deborah Vance, live!” Deborah began, as she was met with more applause.
It felt surreal, like the air around her had thinned without warning, like the floor beneath her might dissolve if she shifted her weight wrong. A slow, sinking disorientation spread through her chest, the kind that came not with panic, but with the hollow hush of a truth too large to hold. As if the universe had tilted just a few degrees, and nothing—not her breath, not the sound of her name on Deborah’s tongue—could be trusted to land the same way again.
“And if you’ve been living under a rock, maybe you haven’t heard the news, which is that we are the number one late night show in America!”
Another surge of applause rolled through the speakers, sharper this time, celebratory and final. The disappointment settled slowly, not like a wave crashing down but like a tide receding—revealing everything hollowed out beneath. What remained was just the quiet ache of knowing, of watching someone you love stand in the light and realizing you’d been left in the dark.
“And that’s because of all of you! And all of you—” Deborah pointed out, past the cameras, past the lights, straight into the living rooms of millions. Maybe right into Ava. “Thank you—for inviting me into your home every night. I hope we’ve made you laugh, and by we, I mean, all the people that make this show what it is.”
The camera panned wide as Deborah swept her arms toward the crew, toward the band. Ava braced herself, breath caught behind her ribs. The applause blurred, muffled like it was underwater, as Deborah lifted others into the spotlight while Ava stood here in the dark, heart thudding like a wound. Forgotten. Abandoned. Left in the dust as though none of it—none of it—had ever mattered. Not the nights rewriting monologues until dawn. Not the way they’d fought and shaped something real from the wreckage. Not the way Deborah had looked at her so many times.
“Starting with this crew, my band—” she clapped, the sound echoing, “my incredible producers, my hilarious writers, my wonderful manager Jimmy Lusaque Jr. And my brilliant, brilliant plastic surgeon.”
It was all just words. Words meant to keep her working. Words meant to win. Words, Ava realized now, that didn’t hold weight beyond the walls of that stage—cheap scaffolding to prop up the empire Deborah had built brick by ruthless brick. Ava had helped her lay the final stones, smoothed the mortar with her own hands, bled into its foundation without hesitation. And now it stood gleaming, crowned in applause, its architect beloved, immortal, untouchable.
Ava let out a sharp breath, somewhere between a scoff and a swallow. “Bullshit,” she muttered, barely audible. She shifted her bag up on her shoulder, ready to go.
The dream was intact, the legacy secured. Deborah Vance had won. And Ava Daniels would be nowhere in the credits.
Laughter rang out—rapturous and unrelenting, gilding the studio in a fevered kind of devotion, and with it came the cruel clarity Ava hadn’t wanted to face. That was it. She turned. Walked. The floor shifted beneath her, her body heavy with something more than betrayal, more than shame—it was the finality that unmoored her, the quiet knowing that this was the hardest mountain she and Deborah would ever have to climb. Their lives were too bound now, too tangled to ever fully separate, and even in the sharpest throb of rejection, Ava knew she’d still forgive her. Maybe not now. Maybe not soon. But it would come. She’d find a way to move past the fury, past the echo of her name turned into a dagger, even when everyone else had been right—especially then.
They had all warned her. About Deborah. About the machine. About staying too long in the glow of someone who never intended to share the spotlight. And maybe they had been right. Maybe she’d never been anything more than a tool to prop up a legacy. And now that legacy had been sealed. Without her.
“And there is, of course, one person who really made it happen."
Her hand was already on the door, breath shallow, vision blurred at the edges. She was already mid-step, about to disappear into the night, half-lost in her own unraveling, barely hearing the rest.
"And that’s my head writer, Ava Daniels.”
It coursed through her like divine fire—raw, radiant, uncontainable. Her name, spoken aloud beneath those studio lights, didn’t sound like a name at all, but a revelation, a summoning. It filled the space like thunder held in a cathedral, echoing through her bones with the weight of something holy. Every inch of her sparked to life, trembling on the edge of awe and collapse. The security guard hadn’t moved—just stood there with the badge still in her hand, her gaze fixed on Ava like she’d just witnessed a miracle.
It surged through her veins like a divine fire—raw, radiant, unbearably alive. Her name, carried onstage beneath the blaze of those lights, a summoning carved from silence. The sound of it filled every hollow inside her, reverberating like thunder through the nave of some great cathedral, shaking loose whatever parts of her still feared she didn’t belong. Every inch of her sparked to life, her skin prickled, breath caught somewhere between sob and surrender, every nerve suspended on the knife-edge of Deborah's penitent confession. The security guard hadn’t moved. She just stood there, Ava’s badge still in hand, watching Ava now with the quiet, wide-eyed stillness of someone who’d just witnessed the divine.
Ava stopped mid-step, breath tangled in her chest, limbs stilled by the sheer force of it. She turned as if pulled by gravity, her body slow to obey, eyes glassy with disbelief, mouth parted like a prayer half-remembered and dropped her bag on the countertop.
“And I’ve been asked to fire her by the head of this company, Bob Liptka,” Deborah said, unwavering, “but I won’t do that.”
Ava’s breath caught hard in her throat. “What is she doing?” she whispered.
Everyone had been wrong. About Deborah, about the woman beneath the sharp suits and sharper lines—about what legacy meant to someone who’d been clawing toward it since girlhood. She had made it. The summit was hers, finally, fully: the crowd, the crown, the history books already beginning to write her name in ink. Here she was, standing in the glow of everything she’d ever wanted, ever fought for, and choosing instead to give it away. For Ava.
And Ava had been ready to accept her place in the shadows of it all. She would’ve forgiven her. God, she would’ve swallowed the silence and the hurt and every thread of herself unraveling just to see Deborah fly. Just to be permitted to be within her orbit. But Deborah she was—on live television, no less—lighting a match to the very empire she built, for herself. For them.
In that moment, Ava understood—they hadn’t just been wrong about Deborah. They hadn’t even come close.
For Ava, a girl who had never been religious, who had never prayed for anything more than maybe a little clarity or a few more hours in the day, felt something holy swell in that cramped little guard station, fluorescent-lit and humming with static. It was as if the veil between worlds had thinned, just for a breath. The moment stretched wide, strange and weightless, charged with the kind of stillness that didn’t belong to earth. The sound of her name, spoken aloud with quiet awe before the world, turned the cheap tile beneath her feet into hallowed ground. She felt it in her blood, in the electric hush that followed—something ancient, celestial, breaking open inside her. The unmistakable spark of a miracle, as if the universe had cracked open for just long enough to say:
You are seen. You are chosen. You are cherished and irreplaceable.
All because Deborah had said her name. Had let it ring out into the world like liturgy, clear and steadfast, the syllables burnished with admiration. She hadn’t whispered it behind closed doors or offered it as a footnote. She’d declared it—full-throated, immutable—a truth broadcast to millions. A sacrificial benediction.
More than recognition, it was consecration. It was a brilliant and blinding undoing of everything that had come before—the silence, the distance, the threat of erasure. Ava stood inside the echo of it, trembling, undone, as if some ancient part of her had been rewritten. Her name now etched into the scaffolding of Deborah’s legacy, not as a shadow trailing behind, but as a pillar holding it aloft. She was immortalized in Deborah's life, and beyond that, she was solidified as something important to her.
And in that moment, Ava felt it—felt the veil between ordinary and divine thin to nothing. Something adjacent to heaven. A love so startlingly clear it nearly blinded her.
The applause had long since quieted. Even the laughter, once thick in the air like incense, had thinned to an impossible stillness. Ava barely blinked. Her eyes stung, glassy, unmoored from time or logic or anything she could name. Deborah stood center stage beneath the blistering warmth of the lights, and suddenly, she looked unbearably human—anointed and trembling, a woman with everything to lose and nothing left to shield herself with.
“And I am sad,” Deborah said. Her voice didn’t tremble, but there was a weariness to it, a vulnerable cadence threaded with grief. Ava could feel the weight of the silence that followed, as if the room itself bowed its head in recognition. Deborah didn’t rush it. She let the ache live there, gave it shape.
Then she took a breath, small and audible, the kind that hitchhikes behind a memory.
“You always think you have to be more than good. That even if you’re great, even if you’re lucky, it’s still not enough—that you have to claw your way through every inch of it just to be seen.” She paused, the weight of it sitting plain in her throat. “And maybe that’s true sometimes. But somewhere along the way, I forgot that there are good people. People who show up. Who give a damn.” Her voice softened, steadied. “I got so caught up trying to rewrite my story, reclaim whatever legacy I thought I’d lost, that I stopped looking at the people who mattered. The ones who were already there.”
Ava watched as Deborah paused, eyes lowered, lips pressed in thought, and something in the air changed—subtle but irreversible. She was watching something raw cracking open within Deborah on live television, the tremble not in her voice but in the space she left between words. Ava could feel it: the shift. The woman onstage had climbed her mountain, yes, but not unscathed—not without realizing, finally, that the climb had left bruises on people she hadn’t meant to harm. Ava included. And somehow, impossibly, she was trying to make it right.
“I refuse to fire her.”
The words carved through Ava like a knife—sharp, radiant, impossible. Her mind reeled, unable to hold it. But she did. She had. The memory of that moment—Winnie’s face, the finality in her own voice, the ache in her gut—still lived in Ava's mind. Had she not already been cast aside?
“And not just because she’s my creative partner—”
Deborah let the word slip into the stillness, low and deliberate, each syllable laced with the weight of memory and the ache of what had been carried alone for too long. Ava felt it resonate deep beneath the surface, a private language spoken aloud. There was something intimate in it, something tender, as if the title had been meant for one person only. In the hush that followed, with applause waiting to erupt and the air stretched thin with meaning, it became clear that part wasn’t just about legacy or spectacle. It was about Frank. About what had once been, and what had remained. And Ava, watching through glass and static, understood: some truths aren’t broadcast for acclaim. They’re offered, gently, to the ones who need to hear them most.
“But because it’s a slippery slope.” Deborah paused, let the words settle. “A few days ago, I agreed to cut a joke I solely made—to protect Ethan Sommers and the studio’s interests.”
There it was—that marrow-deep conviction, honed not by power but by proximity to pain. Ava watched her, breath caught, as Deborah stood at the summit of everything she’d built and chose, without hesitation, to reach back. Something in her had shifted—because Ava had said the things no one else would, had held up a mirror without turning away. And now, here Deborah was, not defending herself, not rewriting the past, but standing firm in it, reshaped by love, by loss, by the slow and brutal miracle of becoming someone better.
Her throat cinched with the sudden weight of it, tears welling so swiftly they blurred the edges of the world. Ava’s hand found her chest like instinct, like prayer, as if trying to hold her heart in place. The air felt thinner, sharper, every breath trembling at the seams. She’s doing this for me. For us. Deborah was unraveling the foundation beneath her own legacy, dismantling it with unwavering grace, choosing love, integrity, and grit over longevity, truth over safety. And she was doing it in front of everyone.
“And now,” Deborah continued, soft but searing, “I’m being asked to fire someone I love who did nothing wrong.”
It struck like a thunderclap—luminous and shattering. The words crashed through Ava’s body with the electric clarity of revelation, dazzling and disarming all at once. Every cell sparked to life, reverberating with the impossible, radiant truth of it. Love. Not buried in subtext, not softened by implication—spoken aloud, unashamedly, before a nation. Ava swayed where she stood, breath caught, eyes stinging, the world shimmering with a strange, blistering effulgence.
Millions now knew the depth of Deborah’s adoration—no longer hinted at in glances or half-jokes or the tremble of withheld affection, but spoken into existence, made manifest. She had breathed life into the truth, shaped it with her mouth and let it rise, unhidden, before a sea of strangers. And in doing so, she hadn’t diminished it—she’d sanctified it.
The crowd didn’t cheer. Didn’t gasp. Didn’t move. The silence was total—devotional. Ava merely stood in the glow of the guard booth’s flickering light, still holding her own breath, every cell in her body alive with disbelief. Her name. Her place. Her love—spoken aloud before the world.
The security booth had gone silent, save for the faint hum of the old monitor and Ava’s soft, choked breaths. She stood transfixed, trembling—part prayer, part panic—as Deborah’s voice filled the air with solemn grace.
“So what will they ask of me next?” Deborah’s voice carried with it an ache so heavy it seemed to press against the glass of the little booth. “Where’s the line?”
She let the silence settle, let it echo and expand, like a cathedral gathering its breath.
“Well, for me,” she continued, “it’s here. Right now.”
Ava’s whole body swayed forward, as if her heart might pitch her into the screen. Another breathless pause stretched wide, delicate and charged, the kind that remade silence into something rare. Every part of her leaned into it—into the pull, the hush, the impossible hope that this was real. That she hadn’t imagined it. That her name, spoken like that, might mean something she hadn’t dared let herself want.
“Which is why tonight will be my last show.”
The sound that came from Ava wasn’t formed, just a breath that shattered. “No, no, no, no!” she cried out, voice rising, frantic, her palms pressed hard to the counter as if bracing against the pull of something immeasurable. “What are you doing?” Her eyes didn’t move from the screen. She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. The guard turned, eyes wide and concerned, but Ava barely noticed.
Deborah continued, steady beneath the murmur of heartbreak blooming across the studio audience.
“I’m not naive. In this industry, you always have to make certain sacrifices, because this is a business. And I get that.”
Each word was precise, patient, measured like a final stitch pulling shut the seams of something beloved. Ava’s eyes blurred. Her ribs hurt from how tightly her lungs refused to release.
“And there’s good people on the business side who are trying to navigate the difficult intersection of art and commerce. But thanks to Wall Street, big tech, and other conglomerates disrupting our industry, it’s gone too far.”
Not a whisper stirred in the studio now. Deborah held the room, the country, the world, in the palm of her hand.
“It’s not enough to be number one anymore, or to make a profit, or to even make you laugh.” She looked out, past the lights, into the dark, as if she was peering directly through the monitor into Ava herself.
“I might be a capitalist pig myself,” she added, a smile barely lifting her lips as a chuckle rippled, aching to be joy but collapsing into grief. “But first and foremost, I’m a comedian.” She shrugged, not flippant, but clear-eyed. Even the laughter sounded like goodbye as it faded out.
“And I care more about making this show with integrity and grit with someone I love than I do about making shareholders happy." She said it so easily, with another shrug—so small, so real—and her voice thinned with emotion, but never wavered.
“So yes—this is a goodbye.”
The audience broke, soft and stricken. Someone called out, “We love you!”—a fragile echo, a flare of devotion in the dark. And Deborah smiled. Eyes glassed, shoulders squared. Ava was crying now, one hand clenched over her mouth, the other pressed to the badge now in her own hand, still warm from being in the guard’s hand.
“Thank you,” Deborah said gently, the rawness in her voice softened by affection. “That’s very sweet.” Her gaze swept over the crowd, as if imprinting them into memory—each upturned face, each tear-bright eye. Then, turning back to the camera, she smiled, intimate now, reverent and warm.
“I loved going to bed with you every night,” she said, lips curving. The audience chuckled. A kind of sacred hush trembled beneath the laughter.
“Sorry I’m finishing too quickly.”
Laughter bellowed, now, rich and grief-tinged, as if clinging to her voice were the only way to hold onto this moment. Ava could barely breathe. It felt like watching a star extinguish itself, incandescent and unwavering until the very end.
“This was my dream,” Deborah continued, tears pooling now, her voice catching. “And I’m so happy I got it.” Her jaw trembled. “But the dream changed. And so did I.”
The tears slid down Ava’s cheeks freely. She didn’t wipe them away. Her hand was still clutching her badge like it was a lifeline.
Deborah pulled in a breath, gathering herself. “So don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t feel sorry for my staff. I’ll be paying all of their contracts out. But I have a message for Bob Liptka and this company’s board.” She leaned slightly forward, eyes flaring with steel. “You can try to silence me, but you—”
The screen suddenly cut to a commercial, interrupting Deborah's monologue.
Ava gasped. “No! No! What happened?! What happened?!”
The security guard startled, staring down at the blank TV for a beat, then over at Ava, then back again. Her face twisted into something half-devilish, half-saintly, lips twitching like she was trying to suppress a grin.
“You know…” she began, voice low, glancing toward the malfunctioning gate, “that gate’s been messed up ever since somebody”—she nodded toward Ava—“drove through it. So I’m just gonna go ahead and close my eyes for two seconds.”
Ava could’ve kissed her. She lunged for her bag on the counter. “Thank you! I love you!”
The guard just gave her a nod, warm and knowing, eyes already shut, and Ava was gone, dancing around the gate, her legs already pumping, loafers against pavement. She tore through the lot, hair flying, breath ragged, her whole body alight with something furious and exultant. She had to get to Deborah. Now.
She tore through the lot, her breath shallow, frantic. She checked the first door—nothing. Then another. Each one mocked her with its emptiness. Her chest ached with the effort. The third exit brought her behind the studio, near Deborah’s dressing room. And there she was.
Deborah stood at the threshold of the door, radiant under the yellowed glow of the backstage lights as she made her way out of the door and down the stairs. Her leopard fur coat draped elegantly around and over her shoulders, catching the faintest shimmer of the air. She looked taller, softer, untouchably beautiful in that way Ava had never been able to fully describe—like old glamour woven through time, timeless and entirely hers now.
Sparing no thought, Ava ran—her body thrumming with a singular urgency, a pulse that overrode language, logic, breath. She moved on instinct, on the raw and desperate need to reach her before the moment disappeared. Her limbs burned as the cool wind tore at her clothes, her hair, the edges of everything she couldn’t hold in place. The studio lot blurred past in fractured colours and sound, unimportant, irrelevant. There was only one point on the horizon that mattered now.
“Deborah!” she cried out, her voice cracking with everything she hadn’t been able to say.
Deborah turned, just in time to brace herself as Ava flung into her arms.
“Hi! Hi,” she breathed, arms open before the words even left her mouth, catching Ava with a gentle ferocity that felt inevitable. Her arms closed around Ava with ease, with instinct, like drawing breath. Her hands curled first around her shoulder blades, and then, for the first time, a hand moved to the small of Ava's back, holding her close, tender, affectionately.
They met there, in that charged hush at the edge of the world, and Ava folded into her without hesitation.
Ava pulled back, breath trembling, eyes glassed with unshed tears that clung but didn’t fall—shimmering, suspended, the weight of all she’d just seen still anchoring her in place. Her hands hovered at Deborah’s shoulders, as if reluctant to let go, but needing distance, needing clarity, then falling to her sides.
Her voice cracked under the strain of disbelief and relief, love and pain all crashing in at once. “Why?! Why did you do that?!”
Deborah didn’t answer right away—just looked at her, eyes alight with something soft and rooted, breath caught in her throat at the sight of her, so close, so impossibly real again. There she was. The one who'd unraveled whatever defenses she’d managed to rebuild. The one who made all of it possible. The one she’d given up everything for. And now, with Ava standing in front of her like a memory made flesh, Deborah could only look—held in the gravity of all they’d lost, and all they might still recover.
“You should have fired me and kept the show,” Ava said, the words falling out like a confession, like she meant to carry the guilt for both of them.
But Deborah only smiled and raised her hands in a slow, weightless gesture.
“There’s no show without you.”
Ava’s mouth parted, stunned still, confusion flickering like static behind her eyes. “I’m— I’m so confused. Why did you kick me off the lot?”
Deborah’s eyes warmed, a half-sigh tumbling out with a fondness only Ava could pull from her. “Because I knew if you figured out what I was gonna do, you’d have said exactly what you said just now. You’d try to stop me. You’re annoying like that.”
The word—annoying—lacked barbs, weight, cruelty; it mingled around Ava like a hug, familiar and intimate and achingly affectionate. Ava laughed—shaken, breathy, disbelieving.
The laugh caught in her chest, fractured and trembling, the tears rising again with new weight—but still, they held. And in that breath between the past and whatever came next, she looked at Deborah with something raw and searching. Their dynamic had tilted again, quiet and seismic. The rules were being rewritten in real time. Ava needed to see it—needed to find certainty in Deborah’s face, something firm enough to hold onto as the ground reshaped beneath her.
“Are you sure?”
Deborah’s gaze didn’t waver. It held Ava’s with a depth that made the air feel charged, like the hush before a storm that would never come. She studied her in silence, not just looking but remembering—cataloguing each scar etched into their shared history, every sharp word and every fragile forgiveness, every night spent stitching themselves back together in drafts and dinners and quiet car rides home. Her expression held no trace of doubt aside from grief of the loss, and only a quiet, breathtaking certainty, as if she were anchoring them both with the steadiness of her love. And then, through the soft gravity of it all, her voice broke gently through the stillness.
“I am.”
Ava dropped her gaze, head bowed slightly in the quiet ache of knowing just how much had been sacrificed for her. The guilt clung, stark and visceral. But in its place, something else unravelled—Deborah was still here.
“Come on,” Deborah said, her voice soft but certain. “Let’s go home.”
They turned, the world around them quieting to a hum. For a moment, only the barest contact—fingertips ghosting over skin, the softest suggestion of connection.
And then, without hesitation, Deborah reached out. Her hand found Ava’s with intention, fingers slipping between hers in a gesture both instinctive and deliberate, tender and certain. There was no flourish, no pause for doubt. It felt inevitable, as though their hands had always been meant to meet in this exact way, in this exact moment, when everything had changed.
Deborah’s hand was warm—steadier than Ava remembered, steadier than she felt—and it folded into hers with the kind of pressure that didn’t demand but assured. There was history in that grip, and something else too: devotion, quiet and whole, threaded through every line of her palm. Ava held on, breath catching in her throat, because Deborah’s hand in hers didn’t just feel good. It felt like promise. Like permanence. Like truly coming home.
INT. DEB'S CAR - NIGHT
They slipped into the car with a silence so full it bordered on sound, the kind that presses against your eardrums until even your heartbeat feels loud. The door shut, and for a moment, neither of them moved. The weight of what Deborah had done—the enormity of it—settled over them in deferent hush. The studio, the show, the long climb to the peak of an empire—all of it behind them now. The dream dissolved in a single monologue, and Ava still felt its shape sculpted inside of her chest, guilt flickering like a second pulse.
Seatbelts clicked. Deborah exhaled, low and steady. Her fingers gripped the wheel with the precision of someone familiar with control but quietly rattled by the absence of an unknown horizon.
Ava turned to her, gaze soft, trying to make herself small within the question she already knew was impossible to ask without weight. “So what now?”
Backing up slowly, Deborah cast a glance over her shoulder, one hand on the wheel, the other resting across the back of Ava’s headrest—a touch that felt casual, familiar, and unfathomably intimate. “Well,” she murmured, “I don’t know. But as long as we keep working, we’ll figure something—”
And then, without warning, a jarring thud rattled through the frame of the car.
Bob Liptka’s palms slammed down hard on the hood, his face sudden and feral in the windshield’s glare—rage blooming fast and red as he locked eyes with Deborah through the glass. The car idled in the heavy breath of confrontation, the world around them stilled as if time itself bent to the weight of what had just been sacrificed.
“Hey!” Bob’s voice cracked across the night like a whip, his palms planted on the hood with thunderous finality. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Deborah didn’t shrink in his sudden presence. She turned her head slowly, hands back on the wheel, a wry grin curving at the corner of her mouth—something theatrical, feline. “Well I’m guessing not back to your place.”
Bob’s body quaked with fury. “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” The words exploded from his throat, guttural, furious, a man stripped of dignity. He paused, breath ragged, spitting the truth like bile. “You just burned the whole thing down.”
Ava felt it like a spotlight snapping on, hot and blinding, casting her and Deborah into view. Bob’s words weren’t aimed at her directly, but they landed with precision all the same. Guilt coiled in her chest, sudden and unwelcome, as if just by standing there she’d become part of the wreckage.
Beside her, Deborah's amusement thinned, dissolved. What lingered in its absence was something flint-edged and formidable, a shift so slight it could’ve been missed—unless you were Ava.
“Move.”
It left her mouth like a blade drawn from its sheath—sharp, final, untouched by hesitation. One syllable, honed not in haste but forged in fury, clipped clean from the thick tendon of all she’d endured. The air around her seemed to constrict, as though even the atmosphere knew better than to resist her.
“For her?” he snapped, stabbing his palm toward the passenger seat. “Really?”
Ava’s chest throbbed with a panic she couldn’t name, each beat a hammer against the cage of her ribs. His eyes were on her—heavy, blistering—and shame surged beneath her skin, flushing her throat, her jaw, her ears. She couldn’t meet it. Her gaze dropped, latching onto the dash, the floor, the worn edge of the seatbelt—anywhere that wasn’t him, anywhere she might hide the guilt clawing its way up her spine.
“Correct,” Deborah said, venom sharpening her voice. “Move.”
Bob sneered, eyes bloodshot and burning. “After everything you’ve worked for? You think people give a shit about your newfound high moral stance? I’ll tell you what, Deb, they just wanted a couple of laughs before they go to bed. You’re done, my friend.”
“I’ll be fine, thanks.”
“We own you.” Bob added, leaning in closer, voice dropping low and cruel. "You know that, right?”
Deborah’s smirk faltered, its edges softening into something far more ancient. Her brow drew in, subtle but sharp, the fine lines around her eyes catching the low light. Something shifted beneath her expression—an old understanding reawakened. Recognition of the ruinous thing before her. Of the coyote behind the mask, the twisted wires sparking behind the smile. She saw it now—saw him clearly—for what he truly was. And the empire he served trembled in her gaze.
“We have a noncompete clause,” he said, slowly now, savoring every syllable. “You can’t touch a mic for the next eighteen months. You can’t walk on a stage. You can’t step in front of a camera. You can’t sing in the fucking shower.”
Her jaw loosened, then locked tight, tension rippling beneath her skin. Ava saw the tremble in her knuckles where they gripped the wheel—slight, but enough to mark the swell of something rising, held back only by sheer will.
Bob let the silence fester before delivering the final blow. “And if you do—I will be suing you into fucking oblivion.”
A pause gathered between them, dense and swollen with everything unspoken, expanding until it pressed against the edges of breath and silence alike.
“I hope it was fucking worth it,” he spat, eyes back on Ava with a sneer, gesturing towards her again, disdain rolling off him in waves. “I hope she was.”
Deborah’s fingers stiffened around the wheel, tendons taut beneath skin gone pale with pressure. Her mouth held firm, carved into silence, her rage too vast for language, too searing to spill.
Bob exhaled, smug and bitter. “What a goddamn shame.” And then he turned, walking away into the dark, leaving behind only the stench of ash and arrogance.
Ava sat stricken, her breath strangled in her chest, vision blurring as guilt crashed into her, savage and unrelenting. A sob clawed up her throat—tight, silent, barely contained. Her hands trembled in her lap. That voice—Bob’s voice—echoed still, venomous and horrifyingly correct. Who was she? What had she done to deserve this woman, this sacrifice, this goddamn act of devotion that had gutted a legacy?
She wasn’t special. She wasn’t enough. She knew it down to her marrow, cellular, felt it ripping through her like static, her skin too tight, her thoughts too loud. She’d ruined everything. She hadn’t meant to—but she had. And Deborah…
The car rolled gently. She realized then—Deborah was pulling back into the spot they’d just left, the ground gently crunching beneath the tires, the motion purposeful, until it stopped.
Something was happening. Something was shifting.
Deborah reached across the space between them, her palm warm as it found Ava’s cheek. Her touch was steady, sure. She turned her gently, thumb brushing along the track of a tear that had slipped free, then another.
She didn’t speak. Just looked at her—looked into her—with something far too vast to name. There was no pity in her eyes. No regret. Only devotion. Only knowing. Her thumb traced Ava’s cheek again, slow, deliberate, wiping away the grief as though it could be unlearned, undone.
Ava’s voice broke through the silence, small and raw, barely more than breath—“He’s right, oh my god.” It wasn’t just a thought, it was a wound tearing itself open mid-sentence, her eyes wide, brimming again, the weight of it all crashing down. Her hands had begun to tremble in her lap, her whole body a quiet tremor of disbelief and shame.
Deborah didn’t flinch. “No, no, no. He’s not.” The words came clean and quiet, spoken without hesitation, without the brittle edge of doubt.
Ava shook her head, tears catching on her lashes. Her chest rose in sharp, uneven bursts, guilt pressing into her ribs like something she couldn’t breathe around. “You gave up everything. You—Deborah, you threw it away. For me. Why? Who am I to-” Her voice cracked like something fractured deep within her.
Deborah’s eyes didn’t waver. “Because I wanted to. Because I chose to," she murmured as she wiped another stray tear. She held Ava’s gaze with a quiet kind of fire, her thumb catching another tear just below her left eye. "I meant every word."
Ava looked at her like the world was tipping sideways, like everything sacred had suddenly been placed in her hands and she didn’t know how to hold it.
“I knew what I was doing,” Deborah said, voice thickening, not with regret but with depth. “You don’t have to understand it,” she added. Her voice didn’t rise, didn’t falter. It wrapped around the question like a balm. “You just have to believe me when I tell you that I did it because I wanted to. Because I meant every word.”
Ava’s eyes searched hers, frantic, pleading. “But what if you regret it?”
“I bounce back,” she said, before Ava could spiral any further, thumb still stroking along her cheek, steady and sure. “I always do. But this time, I knew what I was doing. I know what I want. And you—” she paused, warmth catching in her throat, rising like breath before laughter. “You were the easiest part of the decision.”
Ava’s lower lip trembled. Her hands rose to Deborah’s wrists, clinging like they were the only steady thing in the world. “You’re sure?”
Deborah eyes were so full they felt endless. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
There was no prelude, no warning. Just the weight of her gaze, deep and undistracted, and then the barest shift forward—quiet, steady, undeniable. Deborah closed the space between them with requiem, not exigence, as if any sudden movement might frighten Ava back into herself. But Ava didn’t waver. She merely allowed herself to unravel, thread by tender thread, as Deborah tilted her face nearer, her hand still warm against her cheek, her breath steady despite everything that had been lost, everything that still hung in the air between them.
And then—her lips met Ava’s.
It was a kiss carved from the wreckage, impossibly soft and impossibly sure. A vow in the form of touch. Deborah kissed her like she was returning something that had always belonged to her, like this—this—had been the point of everything. The taste of tears mingled between them, unspoken sorrow stitched into every movement, but there was no apology in it. Only clarity. Only love, aching and whole.
Ava didn’t breathe so much as fall—into it, into her. Her fingers clutched at Deborah’s wrists like a lifeline, and the sound she made was near silent, a broken little gasp into the kiss as if the truth of it overwhelmed her. Because it did. Deborah kissed her like she meant it. Like Ava was not a burden to bear, but a choice. A future.
It undid her.
Slowly, Ava kissed back. Mouth trembling. Heart wide open. A sob caught in her throat, swallowed into the space between them, into the press of lips and salt and devotion. And Deborah held her through it, hands never faltering as they held Ava's face close, grounding her as the whole world tilted toward something new.
Deborah lingered there a moment longer, her forehead nearly touching Ava’s, the hush between them still electric, still holding. Then, gently, she leaned back—one hand remaining at Ava’s cheek, thumb brushing once more with quiet affection before drifting away. Her other hand found the steering wheel, fingers curling around it like returning to an old rhythm.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice hushed, but grounded—like it could tether Ava to the earth again.
Ava swallowed, her lips parted, breath catching in her throat. She barely found the word, let alone the air to carry it. “Yes.”
Deborah nodded once, soft and resolute. “Then let’s go home.”