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Sage stiffened for half a second, that old stubborn reflex flaring — I’m fine, back off, I don’t need this. The part of her that had survived everything alone trying to yank the armor back into place.

But Mary Sue’s shoulder was right there — solid and pillow-soft all at once, warm with the smell of flour and coffee and something clean that felt like every safe place she’d never actually had. It wrapped around her like the gentlest, most certain thing in the world, and Sage’s body simply… gave up.

A quiet, helpless collapse. The last of her fight melted away. She was a little girl again, and for the first time it didn’t feel like weakness.

It felt like coming home.

She turned into Mary Sue and cried like she’d been waiting her whole life to be allowed to. Pressed her face into that soft shoulder, fingers twisting tight in the clean apron, whole body shaking with everything that had been building since the blizzard, since the diner, since a stranger carried her through the snow without asking for a single thing in return. The kind of crying she hadn’t let herself do since Felicity’s apartment — since the last time arms like these had held her and a voice like this had told her it was okay.

Mary Sue held her. Didn't shush her, didn't rush her, didn't say it's okay because Mary Sue Ellen did not lie to people and she didn't know yet if it was okay. She just held her. One hand on her back, steady and warm, the other smoothing her hair with the absent, practiced rhythm of a woman whose hands had been doing this since before this girl was born.

A minute slipped by. Then two.

Sage started to pull back. The armor was trying to reassemble — she could feel it, the urgent need to wipe her face and make a joke and be fine, to not be this person, this crying mess in a diner booth being held by a woman she'd met yesterday.

She started to pull away.

And then she stopped.

Because she didn't have to.

The realization settled over her like those warm hands on her back — quiet, certain, perfectly placed. She didn’t have to pull away. She didn’t have to be fine. Mary Sue’s arm was still wrapped around her, solid and unhurried, asking for nothing and offering everything. So she could just… stay.

She stayed.

Another thirty seconds. Maybe a full minute. Long enough for the sobs to ease into shaky, hiccupping breaths. Long enough for her white-knuckled grip on the apron to loosen. And long enough for that hard knot in her chest to miraculously unclench, just one painful, grateful degree at a time.

Then she lifted her face. Blotchy, ruined, mascara tracking down her cheeks. She looked across the table at Cal, who was sitting exactly where he'd been sitting, his hands around his mug, his gray eyes quiet and warm and absolutely, devastatingly kind.

"This is your fault," she said. Her voice was wrecked. "This is your fucking fault, you big — you big… bear! Ever since I met you, I can't stop crying."

His mouth stayed still. His eyes didn’t change. That steady warmth just stayed right there, patient, like he’d been waiting for this exact moment. He tilted his head as if considering.

"Yeah," he said. "Same."

She laughed. Wet, broken, halfway to another sob — but a laugh. It cracked through the tears and broke the moment open, let air into it, and she wiped her face with the back of her hand and sniffed loudly and was, for one unguarded second, exactly the girl she was. Eighteen. Hurting. Held.

Mary Sue gave her one last firm squeeze — as if she was sealing something important into place — then loosened her arm without letting go completely. Just making room.

"Now," Mary Sue said, her own voice a little thicker, eyes suspiciously bright. "These cookies." She pushed the bag closer. "Chocolate chip. I made them this morning. My — " She glanced at Cal. "My boy here has been eating these since he was twelve years old."

Something passed between them. Cal and Mary Sue. A look — brief, loaded, carrying history, compressed into a single glance that lasted less than a second.

Sage didn't know what the look meant. Couldn't — not yet, not without the stories that lived behind it. But she felt its weight. Felt the vibration of it, the way you feel a river moving beneath ice. Something was there, between these two, something old and deep and fierce, and it had to do with cookies and it had to do with love and it had to do with a boy who became this man.

She filed it away in the new space she was building inside herself.

"Twelve years old?" Sage said, reaching into the bag. Her voice was still rough, still edged with the residue of tears, but the brat was climbing back. "So basically you've been a cookie monster your entire life."

"That's classified."

"He used to eat six at a time," Mary Sue said.

"Mama."

“Still does, when he thinks I’m not looking.”

Sage glanced at Cal and caught it — the faint flush creeping up his neck, the way his jaw tightened in that not-quite-irritated, not-quite-embarrassed way. A big, dangerous man suddenly realizing he was outnumbered by two women and had zero tactical exit.