Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“Jeanne! Jeanne, there she is!”
Slowly, Jeanne lifted her head from the foreboding pile of ungraded homework that had been looming over her for the worse part of the afternoon. She hadn’t yet graded one paper before Cereza had enthusiastically called for her attention, something the 600-years-young witch adored.
She loved Cereza. Occasionally, she admitted it, quietly and in her head, in the early hours of the morning before she drunkenly squeezed her eyes shut for her daily 4-hour power nap.
She loved Cereza, and sometimes she wondered if Cereza loved her back. It wasn’t something they had ever spoken about. Even with their lengthy sexual history, something that spanned as far back as their time in the clan together, neither had ever explicitly declared feelings of romance for the other.
500 years ago, as teenagers, they had teetered on romance’s sharp edge. Each others’ first for everything, the girls had secretly courted one another under the venomously watchful eyes of the Umbra Elders, particularly the Clan leader, who had happened to be Jeanne’s grandmother. Jeanne had always envisioned herself settling down with Cereza in a loving, but forbidden tryst for the rest of their gleefully eternal lives.
But her desires had remained purely imaginary, and instead, both women had been ripped away from each other before their romance had hit its climax.
Reunited 500 years later...things had changed.
It mostly had to do with Bayonetta’s memories. Even now, with her history soundly intact in her brain, Bayonetta sometimes struggled to reconcile her memories with her current lifestyle. How did one tie up 500 year old loose ends?
Jeanne, with the patience of saint, never pushed her. She instead preferred to take solace in the fact that her best friend was happy and healthy.
Yes...she did occasionally cry herself to sleep, and yes, she sometimes restrained herself from screaming, I love you!, while they fucked, but for the most part, her deepest want was for Cereza to be happy.
Admittedly, she had thought things would have changed after Fimbulventr. Something felt like it had changed on the mountain.
Bayonetta looked at her differently now. Occasionally, when their eyes met, her gaze would linger and the edges of her perfectly shaped lips would tilt upwards in a wanting smile, but Jeanne could never be sure if the wanting was for more than what the two currently offered each other.
She wondered if all the sarcasm and playful quips had tarnished their chance at romance. Had the love gotten lost underneath what seemed to be a strictly platonic string of never ending banter?
“Jeanne.”
Cereza’s impatient voice cut through Jeanne’s internal monologue, and the woman’s stone gray eyes refocused her attention on the object of her bottomless affection.
Bayonetta, comfortably curled on the couch across from the small dining table where Jeanne endeavored to grade papers, was pointing excitedly at the television.
A rerun of the 5 PM news hour was playing, and the anchor was adamantly narrating the events of the day, covering a vigilante-intercepted crime that had occurred on the fringes of Brooklyn.
Bayonetta’s eyes were glued to the lithe, white clad figure that pounced from building-top to building-top while the news station’s helicopter-cam struggled to keep up.
Upon close inspection, anyone with eyes as diligent as a witch’s could identify the tightly woven hair suit and intricately crafted style of the Umbra witches that decorated the graceful form of what was undeniably a woman’s body.
An Umbra Witch who concealed her face behind a feline inspired mask, over the course of the last year the self-proclaimed “Cutie J,” had become an iconic New York City superhero. Initially spotted in some of Brooklyn’s most murky residential neighborhoods, her reputation had grown beyond the single borough’s reaches. In recent months, she had been spotted in Harlem, and even as far as the Bronx.
But mostly, she stuck to Brooklyn, and remained an at least weekly form of news entertainment.
Cereza had immediately become enchanted with her and ardently pestered Jeanne to seek their Umbran sister out. They just had to make their presence known to her.
“She must be terribly lonely.”
“Let sleeping dogs lie, Cereza,” Jeanne had flippantly responded at the time, waving one gloriously elegant arm dismissively, “If she wanted to be found, we would already be acquainted.”
Bayonetta had crossed her arms, pushing her lower lip out in the spitting image of stubborn refusal, but Jeanne had convinced her to leave it be, relishing in Cereza’s adorable, but not often seen, pout.
Of course, there were other reasons Jeanne refused to seek out Cutie J’s company.
Mostly because, she was Cutie J.
How Cereza remained clueless eluded and entertained her. During the clan’s existence, there had been very few platinum blonde witches; Jeanne’s royal bloodline had been one of the only ones. And Cutie J’s hairsuit was of an undeniably similar (identical) color to Jeanne’s.
Or perhaps, Cereza feigned innocence...
At this thought, Jeanne’s eyes flickered to survey her waiting friend.
She resisted the urge to smirk. Bayonetta had rested a calculating gaze on Jeanne’s face.
“You never care when she’s on the news, you know.”
“I know.”
“Well, why not?” the dark Umbra Witch demanded, crossing her arms in a show of defiant sass.
“I’ve said it before Cereza. If our friend here wanted to be found, I’m sure she would have sought us out already.”
“Oh come now,” Cereza lamented, “You talk like you know her.”
“Me? Know her? Why would I spend my precious time rendezvousing with a mislead vigilante?”
Bayonetta huffed quietly, snatching the remote up from the coffee table and turning the TV off. Ripping a throw from the couch’s headrest, she silently curled under the blanket, side-eyeing Jeanne with the sly disappointment of an offended house cat.
The mood in the apartment sullened a bit, and moments later Jeanne was sure Cereza had lulled off to sleep. Reveling in the peaceful quiet and comfortable sound of Cereza’s soft, rhythmic breathing, the blonde witch began the gargantuan task of grading dozens of backlogged homework papers.
After she was done, she’d soak in the tub a bit, and perhaps invite Cereza to joi-
“A stake out!” Cereza declared suddenly.
Air blew out of Jeanne’s nose quickly; a thin red line streaked haphazardly across Ethan’s paper, the result of Jeanne jumping at Cereza’s abrupt suggestion.
Cereza had twisted on the couch to fully face Jeanne, excitement dancing in her gorgeous blue-gray eyes, and Jeanne felt some of her annoyance wither away.
She didn’t have to inquire to know what Cereza was going on about. She knew her friend. The woman was still bothered by the fact that there possibly existed one more lonely Umbra Witch in the world.
“It would be fun!” Bayonetta insisted in a light tone.
“That’s stalking.”, Jeanne retorted sharply, “Do you enjoy being stalked, Cereza?”
Cereza’s lips twisted ever so slightly before forming an enticingly playful smile. Jeanne felt her heart swell with a suffocating amount of affection and forced her face to remain passive.
“Well...if you were the one stalking me,” Cereza purred.
“No.”
“Jeanne.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“If you‘d like to do a stake out, say no.”
“N-, Cereza!”
“Jeanne.”
Jeanne sighed pointedly, dropping her pen, and glaring at her friend. Work forgotten, she extracted herself from her seat at the dining table and plopped down on the couch beside Cereza.
In an instant, the other woman was happily curled on top of her, snuggling her face into the crook of Jeanne’s neck. Jeanne relented, resting a warm cheek on top of Cereza’s head. Automatically, her hand moved to rub comforting circles around the other woman’s pleasantly sculpted back.
These were the moments that made her feel like there was more between them. Cereza sighing and pressing her cheeks against Jeanne in an affectionate cuddle, kissing her gently on the top of her head, holding her tightly after a hard day of work. It all felt...so loving.
The affection had even gone so far as to transcend the walls of their adequately sized Brooklyn apartment. Cereza would plaster herself tightly to Jeanne’s side during shopping excursions, eyeing daggers at gawking men (of which Jeanne had no interest in), as though possessively claiming the blonde witch as hers.
Some things were missing. They didn’t kiss in public, or hold hands. And Cereza had never introduced Jeanne as her girlfriend (and vice versa).
It confused Jeanne. Were they just best friends who happened to fuck an awful lot? Were they secret lovers? Were they working through it?
Who fucking knew?
Cereza shifted in Jeanne’s arms, and the younger witch was once again pulled out of her internal reveries.
“Are you alright?” Cereza inquired simply, craning her neck to study the other Umbra woman’s face, “You seem lost.”
“I’m fine,” Jeanne murmured, reaching for the remote that had been tossed aside by Cereza with wanton disregard, “But we are not stalking Cutie J,” she continued, the sound of finality punctuating her tone.
“If you say so,” Cereza agreed quietly, though it sounded more like an ‘agree to disagree,’ response. Sighing contentedly, she rested her head back onto the cool planes of Jeanne’s neck, and Jeanne began quickly flipping through channels.
Inevitably, they landed on the news again, this time live. They had tuned into the middle of a heated discussion. The familiar faces of New York’s most renown anchors were blabbering away excitedly, and it took a few moments for Jeanne’s brain to piece together the topic of their conversation.
“...Spotted in Brooklyn! That makes two,” the more enthusiastic of the afternoon anchors had been in the middle of declaring.
The calmer female anchor smiled politely in response, turning her gaze to the camera. Speaking directly to the audience now, she said, “Well, it looks like Cutie J finally has a partner in crime. Hopefully, this spells a bright future for Brooklyn.”
At this, Jeanne’s eyebrows shot up, while Cereza adjusted her head incrementally to better see the TV.
Sure enough, the news program began to quickly flash through images of what was clearly another Umbra woman.
“Unbelievable,” Cereza murmured.
The woman in question wore an eerily familiar black and gold Umbran outfit. A mask, typically incorporated into hairsuits, covered the lower half of her face from the nose down. The headpiece crowned about half-a-foot upward from her head in a beehive style, and split at the base of her neck, forming two, long billowing fins.
Jeanne blinked hard a few times. She clearly did not remember acquiring a sidekick, much less one of such stature.
“Her suit looks like my mother’s,” Cereza commented.
“It’s the same style,” Jeanne confirmed. And it was; the only touches of Rosa’s that it lacked were her ornamental butterfly glasses and restrictive belts and chains. Otherwise, it was the spitting image of the now deceased woman, right down to the beehive.
Summoning her phone, Jeanne quickly plugged the phrase “Cutie J sidekick ny,” into her browser’s search bar. Much clearer images of the mystery witch immediately cluttered the page along with articles describing some her first sightings.
Cereza wriggled on top of her until she too was peering at the uncomfortably bright screen of Jeanne’s phone. Disbelieving silence dominated the atmosphere as the women swiped through dozens of photos.
“Something’s not right,” Jeanne murmured, locking her phone and tossing it onto the coffee table. It wasn’t a definitive feeling; more like an uncomfortable churning in the middle of her chest. It was the same feeling that had proceeded the resurgence of Aesir, and the same feeling she’d gotten right before the forces of Paradiso had assaulted the Umbra Witches’ home.
Call it a Witch’s intuition.
“It seems like we’ll be doing that stakeout after all,” Cereza declared smugly, left eyebrow quirking playfully.
“Seems so.”