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𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄

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How does one dress for the wake of a man like Logan Roy?

This was the first question that had popped into Cora's head after she'd recovered from the chill of finding herself alone in bed. It was hardly the sort of thing she could google, but it didn't stop her from trying. Article upon article sprouted before her eyes, a patch of digital weeds trading stalk and leaf among one another. Logan Roy, dead. His successor, not yet named. A win for America's media landscape? Certainly. A crying shame? The jury was still out.

She had opted for grey. Grey dress, grey blazer, grey shoes. Cora remained devoid of colour even after her departure, sitting in the dimmed lighting of first class, her elbow propped against the soft cushion of airplane arm rest. Deep blue ran thick as syrup across the cloudscape beyond the oval window, as though Cora were several thousand leagues beneath the sea, an inch or two of thick glass from drowning.

Logan Roy had not been the wake's haunting spectre, no, that place had been reserved for whatever changeling had supplanted Roman. The shift was night and day, Cora's mind recalling his tender outline against her own as she watched him from a distance, one that rivalled the stretch from East Coast to West, or the trajectory she fled now. Cora had run again, quietly this time, head bowed to balance her guilty conscience - all because of that stupid piece of paper.

Karl should have flushed it, no, she should have. She should have ripped it out of his hand while they were faffing about with semantics and torn it to shreds. Logan hadn't any sanctity for the trajectory of anyone else's life, why give any to his legacy, but Cora had held both her tongue and hands at bay. She hadn't known the devastation of a single line, how, in the blink of an eye, an ink stain could bloom.

Cora had thought her worst fear for the longest time was leaving herself exposed: to unblinking perception, to hope, to love. Post-Sardinia, that had instinctual shudder had transferred to losing sight of Roman again, a fate she felt she had met at the wake. If she entered to see a ghost, what had he become when he'd been crowned CEO with Kendall? A Polaroid, left unshaken and face down.

She itched her nail against the skin of her neck, felt a sting, pulled back and glimpsed blood on the swirl of her fingertip. With nowhere else to wipe it, Cora clamped her teeth down on her knuckle, metallic tang on her tongue - licking a wound of her own making, as usual. The memory of her own words rang in her ears, sharp despite the dull of cabin pressure, loud above the drone. She had aimed to intercept and achieved the opposite.

"I won't be your mother."

Cora had lost the conversation before it had even started, but in complete fairness, she hadn't been aware of the stakes. After, or perhaps in spite of, her stint in isolation from the Roys, Cora had thought herself able to voice her honest opinion. It wasn't until she had been staring down the barrel of Roman's irritation that she realised he was right where she had left him.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I don't mean anything."

"Yeah, no, you definitely mean something."

"Then I mean whatever the fuck I mean. It doesn't matter - no it does."

She had wished desperately that she could eat her own words. Hand to her temple, the only way to smooth things over seemed to be to continue talking.

"Look, I know what it's like to lose a parent, it's the single most isolating thing in the world, it's, fucking, above ground drowning, but I feel like you're making a mistake taking this on. This doesn't end well, and I'm saying that because I care about you an-"

She'd taken a step forward and Roman had recoiled. His face appeared before her, seared into her retinas, inescapable even against the twin shield of eyelids closed. At first quietly pained, then as the seconds spanned and he shored his defences, brittle apathy that dared her to push, knowing that she wouldn't. The crust of the earth opened up and swallowed him whole. She may as well have been having conversation with herself.

"If you wanna be any help, you'll do what Matsson asked. Fly back. Lay the groundwork. Shouldn't be hard, since you're so preoccupied with this going through."

Stated with the committal of a passing stranger, commenting on the sky. Cora hadn't realised it in the moment, but she'd had ample time from airport drive to customs and beyond, fishing conclusions from a murky reservoir. He had been looking for an excuse to drive her out, though the question of when this had become his intent haunted Cora. Had his late night visit, an appearance she'd chalked up to grief, been mute goodbye?

She twitched, faint with uncertainty. With Logan's death, a heavy curtain had fallen upon him, erasing the man she had known. No, even if he was a husk that didn't mean he was gone forever. Two decades, innumerable obstacles, the dark passage of absence and the inextricable tether, hairline yet withstanding, could not all be for nothing. She wouldn't let it.

"Just because you showed up again, and you're acting all kumbaya, doesn't magically change the past. You went to therapy. Great. You're not an addict. That's awesome, that's fucking fantastic. Look at how good shit got for you as soon as you fucked off. Ruining that worrying about little old me? Not worth it. I'm fine. You're fine. You're better than fine, and I guess that was the point."

Cora faced his final words with acute awareness of the flight attendant, close approaching with her silver refreshments cart. She flagged the girl down as she straightened in her seat, smoothing her dark hair, pulling straight the blazer gone askew from slumping. The flight attendant was pretty; plush with youth, bubbly as Moët & Chandon and utterly guileless to the dark passenger stirring aloft in Cora's chest. A seasoned bartender might have been eagle-eyed to recognise it, but a seasoned bartender she was not.

"I don't suppose you serve whiskey highballs."

≪ °❈° ≫

Fallon was stupid with wine and spirits when she arrived in Norway.

She found Matsson overlooking the trees outside, the light of the fireplace dancing against long glass panes. Through her blurred and slow blinking eyes, Cora could have mistaken the scene for a forest fire. He didn't stir to the sound of her footsteps, neither did she call out to him, pacing the length of their shared silence, the cotton of her all-grey outfit prickling her skin. When Cora drew within reach, she noticed the low tumbler of whiskey in his hand, cubes of ice floating in a sea of amber. Her mouth watered at the sight.

"Finally." Matsson said, with an air that begged continuity, stoicism unceasing in her presence. His displeasure was palpable, but so was the melancholy, hanging at his temples, in the crinkle of her eye. Cora felt a stab in her gut: had she hurt him by staying away?

"Sorry for all the loose ends," she mumbled.

"I heard they grew looser. You bought again in New York, a cat too. Something you aren't telling me?"

"No," Cora lied, "are you keeping tabs on me?"

"Mm. Begs the question of why." Matsson replied, with a tone that neither offered explanation nor wiggle room. He wasn't inquiring, he was instructing.

"Well it's important for me to reconnect with Frank ..." Her words were fumbled. Matsson turned his head to glance down at her, arching an eyebrow, his gaze falling to her lips. Cora's cheeks reddened, an ugly blotch, as though she were allergic to the confrontation in his eyes. "And ... You know ... I mean it's New York, Lukas. It's ... It's my home."

"I've been thinking," he began, having clearly made his mind up, for no doubt effused his words. "If you give me better assurance, maybe I wouldn't be left so uneasy. Playing with the truth, it can be read as disrespectful. You wouldn't want to disrespect me, would you."

"Of course not ... But assurance?" She spoke slowly as him but not nearly as deliberate. She could sense him toying with her.

"Assurance means assurance. Commitment."

Cora recoiled in strained laughter.

"I'm your girlfriend. Isn't that commitment?"

Matsson remained straight-faced, inviting nothing but speculation, and speculate she did, because he couldn't possibly mean ... Cora scoffed without thought, head light with broken sobriety and disbelief, aware only to the growing damp at the back of her neck, and her steady, desperate heartbeat. A sway in her stance, Matsson's hand steadied her by the shoulder, strong fingers anchoring against her collarbone.

"You're drunk."

She jerked away from him, steadying herself to the window, frost blooming in the gaps between her fingers. More than anything, she wanted to press her cheek to the cold, soothe the blaze of her skin, or perhaps if she were lucky, to melt through the glass altogether. The forest wouldn't judge her, but he would.

"Why does that matter?"

"It doesn't. It's an observation."

"Right. Well. Whatever. Just spit it out. If you want something, have the nerve to say it."

"Sure. Have it your way." He watched her with passive amusement and swirled his glass, tinkling the ice within. Matsson took a long sip. "You should marry me."

Cora careened forward, forehead to the window. She could swear she heard her skin crackling in response, an easy mistake, that had to have been her own throat attempting to smother from the inside out.

"Why would I do that? You and I ... I mean, it's not even been six months."

Matsson shrugged, turning away from her. Cora followed him with the tilt of her head, rolling to rest against her cheek. He was illegible to her, the time apart fraying what little she had come to know of his mannerisms, leaving him impervious as the window before her.

"People marry for all kinds of reasons, the lowest of which being love. Love's a plague. Look at the divorce rate. Didn't have that when we used it properly," Matsson mused, "we should because it works, simple as that. I buy the company. You smooth the rough patch, come time for the chopping block. News like that comes easier from a woman's lips."

"So it's strategic."

"It's smart."

"It's cynical."

"You're a romantic now? Had me fooled."

The comment stung, taking her by surprise, as she had never thought of herself cold, and his lingering silence only provided ample opportunity for her to stew. Maybe there was some truth to it. Cora had returned to New York with warmth in her heart but the trail she had left in her wake was icy. Dodged phone calls, texts gone unanswered and a growing list of little white lies. It had only taken the Atlantic for her to shut him out, cast to the dark as one would a stranger.

"I'm sorry, Lukas." The trees outside were still as death. Her brow crumpled upon itself. "But I don't love you. It's not nice to say but it would be worse to lie about that. That's just not us, is it."

Matsson stirred in her peripherals. He had clutched his chest. It took her a beat to realise he was feigning hurt, casting away the gesture with a dark chuckle.

"Does that matter? Always got the impression you didn't do love."

"What makes you think that?"

Matsson rolled his shoulders, framing a response. The pause spanned long, as though he were testing her to break it. With a final sigh, his jaw firmed and lowered, squaring her up like her was searching for the bull's-eye on a dart board.

"What do you think love is?"

Why ask her that? Didn't everyone know? She opened her mouth, feeling a response building, but all that left her was parched air. What did she think love was? A word, was the kneejerk response of her mind. A pale word to express some amorphous feeling that, in its most accepted form, had remained incomprehensible to her.

Cora knew she loved her friends, suspected she loved her mother, hoped she loved Roman, but each hit her differently, with varying degrees of magnitude, comparing a softball to a bullet. All she knew was the immensity of it. It was like trying to hold an ocean in her clasped hands. At her best guess, love was messy, what little she could hold spilled hopeless, and that which she could keep evaporated beneath scrutiny. What did remain stung her, where her wounds hadn't hardened, for more plentiful than her defences were the places left open, invisible until provoked.

She cleared her throat.

"An effort."

"Kismet. That's how I see it too." Matsson took another sip of whiskey, swirling the glass before handing it to her. She took it without complaint. This would need to be washed down. "I think I'd make the effort here, if you could too."

She hadn't meant it that way, for as much of a trial love was, it was never a trial to manufacture. No, it grew on its own, steady as a plant hardy to the elements and watered on sweat alone, but she was tired, already so tired, of forcing blood from a stone. She knew it was selfish, lazy, all her worst qualities writ large, though her greatest sin in holding his gaze was its eerie similarity to all that Reagan had wanted for her.

If Cora hadn't pushed Roman, she doubted she would have found herself in the weeds. Her confession to Tom echoed in the swell of her beating heart, and she had meant them entirely at the time, but she couldn't ignore reality, not in this way, not after all that she had been through. Maybe the deck had been stacked the moment Logan's heart had stopped beating. What a blessing, she thought, death is so easy. It's the living that's hard.

"If this is your way of proposing, it's definitely left me wanting." Cora replied, trying to buy herself some time, her mind ticking on. Her chuckled at the comment.

"Didn't take you for the theatrics either. No, I would do it properly, do everything properly. A Viking wedding by the sea, or maybe you have a vision. The details are fluid for me. Just say what you want and I'll give it to you. Neither of us are getting younger."

As though he'd summoned a vision, the images appeared before her in startlingly vivid detail. The tranquillity of her time in Sardinia, now with the assurance of loose ends tied. Someone to dote on her, or else to settle into placid indifference with. She couldn't possibly be hurt by Matsson, not when their relationship had never been so loaded with a lifetime of words unsaid, neither did she doubt that she could truly hurt him. Perhaps she could keep writing, perhaps she could start a family, perhaps she could do both while nursing a bottle by her bedside table, in her own bedroom, in her own wing, her own house. A marriage without love, what did that look like? Whatever she wanted it to.

Either way, stepping out of the shadow of Waystar meant meant the world at her fingertips in the way it had always escaped her. So long she had been haunted. All it would cost was turning blind to everything she had learned of herself.

"I need to think," she replied finally.

"That's not a no."

"It isn't. So observant of you."

"Another observation for you then."

He gestured to the whiskey as Cora drained the glass. She pouted, sliding against the glass, wilting to the floor. It chimed against the hard wood floor as she placed it down with a dreary shrug.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Are you gaslighting me?"

"What does that even mean?" He snickered. "Do you even know?"

Hand outstretched, Cora grasped it. She was unsteady on her feet, collapsing against his chest, resignation heavy on her breath. After months of reprieve, the liquor had taken to her with a reckoning. He was right: she wasn't getting any younger.

"Something happened."

"You're right. Logan Roy died. If ever there was something to drink to, it's that."

He made a noise from deep in his throat, the vibration finding her cheek.

"I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

"No you're not."

"No. I'm not."

Blunt as a hammer strike, blunt enough to chisel where the months had calcified. Cora peered up at him through the thicket of her hair, gone unwieldy like every other part of her had, finding tolerance. Her chest panged, realising too late that that was all she had ever wanted.

His mouth tasted forbidden as she kissed him, a quiet relief, she had to admit, as his hands moved to undress her. Grey at her feet, her body rinsed clean, she kicked her clothes from view. Only the forest could judge her, and if it did, at least it would hold its tongue.

Forehead pressed to the glass, Matsson's breath snaked the nape of her neck, sweeping hair from her bare shoulders to lay claim to the territory of her skin. One hand on her throat, the other between her thighs. She melted to the heat in her core as he clutched each moan in her hand, his name on her tongue, pushing lingering guilt. The first thrust felt like punishment. She would have collapsed against it if he hadn't held firm, though soon enough he let her cheek seek solace against the window, her body having arched to his liking.

Through a muted gaze she watched her breath form a circle of condensation, flowering with the ebb and flow, rote as a mechanism.

In the shower afterwards, she watched the drain swirl with water, steam caressing the ceiling. The glass screen by her side parted to allow for his entry. Matsson rested his chin atop her head, holding her by the waist to press against him. His hand caught her ring finger between thumb and forefinger, manipulating it soft in his grip.

"If I say yes, will you keep it quiet until the deal goes through?"

He thought for a moment. Cora felt his eyes baring down on her, rooting through the contents of her brain. Did she really mean it?

"If that's what you want."

"Say it is. Do you promise?"

She turned to face him. Tendrils of water gripped her hair. She wiped her forehead, her eyes. In the low light cast from the adjoining bedroom, maybe he wouldn't catch it: the smallest hint of deception.

"I promise."