You'll Never Know Me, None Of You Will Ever See My Face

[MurderWeasel]

((Juliette Sargent continued from Play With Fire))

The tears had started in earnest just about as soon as Juliette fled the garden, and it felt like they hadn't stopped in the hour or two since. It was unfortunate. Irrational. A day ago, she would've told herself that she didn't have the moisture to spare. These little things mattered out here. It was a game of degrees, each and every tiny factor playing a role in deciding who would ultimately come out on top. She'd been doing so very well. In all likelihood, she was by now considered by observers the very contender she'd styled herself as from the beginning. Threats ducked and dodged, killers placated, resources conserved—her resume was pretty good.

But now none of that meant a thing.

The game might as well be over.

Her footsteps crunched across the gravel as she walked due east. It was the middle of the day, and the sun was high and bright in the sky, and Juliette wasn't worried about being seen anymore. She wasn't worried about much of anything. What was there left to scare her? The worst had already happened. She had failed.

Everything she'd done, every piece of careful marshaling of her mentality and every moment of fantasizing and speculating, all of it had built towards a kill. Just one. A few would've been better, probably, but unnecessary. Had she made it with but a single notch on her belt, there would've been some awkward questions, but she could finesse it. But to find herself entirely unable to pull the metaphorical trigger?

Worse still, it was Marceline on the end of it. The girl had no idea how close she'd been to death, except that wasn't very true, was it? She'd never been in danger at all. There'd never been a single solitary chance that Juliette could find the guts to carry through. Marceline had been her sacrificial lamb, her special pick, the classmate she'd been pumping herself up to kill for close to a week. The girl had failed too. It had been perfect. Marceline didn't stand a chance, and she'd halfheartedly given Juliette what she'd always yearned for but hadn't dared ask, and the exhilaration and the guilt and the feelings and the moment and all the preparation had all come together into a perfect cocktail, just the motivation to do it and have it done and make sure there was no turning back, and yet there'd never been any real question inside. Juliette just didn't have it in her.

She never had.

Her feet hurt. She'd changed back into her shoes fifteen minutes ago, on the outskirts of the town, because they looked better than the sandals she'd had on for so long. They hadn't pinched her toes so much back at the start, but that was a long time ago, now, and maybe she just hadn't let herself notice. She hadn't let herself notice a lot of things.

This was where she'd met Faith, all that time ago. Faith, stranded alone with her hands bound in tape, so recently robbed by... whoever it was. Didn't matter. Faith was still out there somewhere, probably. Maybe she'd died and just not been announced yet, but Juliette doubted it. Faith seemed like the type who could lay low but explode into action when it was truly necessary. She knew her way around a gun. She could turn herself off enough to take a life, probably, or do it on reflex and instinct enough to leave the worrying for later.

Juliette had never been like that. The cold hard truth was that Juliette really did not much like a lot of her peers, but all the same she didn't—no, she couldn't—hate them. She knew them, and that was why they upset her beyond words, but it also meant that when she looked at them she saw them as people, try as she might to do otherwise. She'd been trying so hard all her time here to kill them in her head and in her heart and yet she couldn't even do that.

Nobody liked Juliette, really. They never had, and it hurt and she didn't quite understand it. She'd told herself so many stories about why. They were jealous. They wanted to tear her down. They were afraid of her ambition. They felt threatened by her. They simply found pleasure in causing pain. They were a bunch of nobodies and losers and obstacles and after school ended she wouldn't have even thought about them again except when looking in passing for some funny anecdote at a campaign dinner or a rally.

But that had never been true.

Mostly, Juliette's classmates probably didn't like her much because they saw her as inauthentic. They saw the mask of kindness and altruism and helpfulness and they told themselves, no way, nobody was that good, nobody was such a kind noble unflinching soul. And they were of course right. Juliette bottled things up so much she'd felt one bad shake away from an explosion for as long as she could remember. There had been incidents and outbursts, and sometimes she let the mask slip and sometimes it was all she could do to hold it on with both hands to keep it from falling away entirely.

But nobody knew what was behind the mask. They conjured up their own images and of course they made them the inverse of everything that Juliette presented herself as. Instead of kind, she was casually cruel. Instead of caring, she was frosty and detached. Instead of altruistic, she was conniving, acting only for her own benefit and profit.

That Juliette they conjured up in their heads wouldn't be here now breaking down like this. She wouldn't be here, in this place, at all. She would've cheerfully slit Marceline's throat and wandered off into the wilderness again to ride it out. She would be less affected by the killing than the real Juliette was by the failure. That was who Juliette had tried so hard to be, but the fit had never been natural.

She'd done her makeup again, halfway between the garden and here. She'd been crying then too, though, so it had come out a mess, and eventually she'd given up and wiped it all away. There were probably a few smudges here and there but that wasn't important. Her legs were a little prickly again and there was nothing she could do about it because she'd left the razor behind. It really didn't matter.

The real Juliette, the one that lived both behind the mask of goodness and behind the sneering illusion conjured by her peers and her own desires? It turned out she looked a lot more like the former than the latter.

The trouble should've been clear from the beginning. It had been, even, but she'd done her level best to rationalize it away. But all the way back on the first day, all the way back when she'd first woken up, Juliette had already been authoring her own undoing even as she told herself she was sowing the seeds of her success.

It was Kelly and the boat that told the story. Kelly had been everything Juliette saw in herself and feared in this context, and Kelly had been cute besides. And so Juliette had decided to take what she could get and she had worked Kelly over, liberally frittered away the girl's supplies and assigned her grunt work and lured her off and into danger and then made that danger manifest.

But she had not killed Kelly. She could've. She'd told herself that again and again, and it was true. It wasn't about killing Kelly. It was about using her, but also teaching her. Kelly was like Juliette. She was too soft, too kind, too weak to make it as she was. And so she had received a rude awakening to the truth of the world, a cold splash of reality to the face.

Juliette had pushed Kelly off the boat to help her. That wasn't just some justification she'd told herself. As Kelly had screamed and spun, for just a moment Juliette's breath had caught in absolute terror that the girl would careen in the wrong direction and crack her neck against the hull, or would become entangled in seaweed or some other sunken hazard and drown. Her own fault if that happened, Juliette had whispered in her mind. Kelly should know how to swim. Kelly should be prepared.

Please, Kelly, she'd thought to herself. Please be alright. You can do it. You can make it.

And she had.

Did the life preserver matter? Had Kelly even realized where it came from? Juliette hadn't expected everything to fall to pieces as it did, and Kelly had been alone in the water, a fish in a barrel, and Juliette had hurled the life preserver as she fled. And whether or not Kelly had made use of that, she'd found her way ashore and had lived on. She was still living on. She'd killed twice, and both times Juliette had been giddy and gleeful, and not just because she wanted what was best for Kelly.

In a way, Kelly had become who everyone thought Juliette was. She had become who Juliette wanted to be, and so when Kelly's name came up on the announcements as a poisoner, or as... as whatever she'd done to Lucas, Juliette had laughed and reveled because there it was: the proof that she could herself succeed.

Kelly was not Juliette.

Still, even now, Juliette wanted the best for the girl. Kelly was cute and smart and kind and she was that person, the one who could do it. She'd been doing it. Where Juliette couldn't succeed, maybe Kelly could, and if she couldn't, well... Juliette didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to imagine what it would be like when Kelly's name came on the announcements, because in some way that would be the worst of all, wouldn't it? It would tell her there had never been any hope in the first place.

The town was so empty, this side especially. The buildings were shattered wrecks of dwellings. Broken homes, now there was something Juliette knew about and believed in. Broken homes, shattered dreams, lies and betrayal. Love was the biggest lie of all, and it hurt, because she felt so much of it bubbling inside, creeping out in these quiet little ways. She could show it by taking care of a sick boy who'd had too much to drink at a party. She could express it with a months-too-late apology to a girl so far gone nobody else would ever say it to her. And she could offer it by finding people who deserved it and trying to push them that little bit further.

Goddammit, was it so wrong of her to use Marceline so that, just for a moment, she could pretend?

It hadn't been fair to ask. She'd known it wasn't fair and she'd asked anyways because what else could she do? What else could she be? Juliette's throat was tight and the collar felt heavier and more real than it ever had before, each gulp lancing pain into her heart. She was a mockingbird, unable to raise an egg on her own but oh so ready to climb into someone else's nest when they'd done all the work for her already. But she'd never be anything more than an impostor.

Her steps came smaller and slower. She barely even saw the world around her now. It was hot out, and she was sweaty, and she wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to be back on the bus. She wanted to be in the hotel room, eyes squeezed tight as Lori thrashed in her sleep, trying to ignore it because she didn't know what she could do to help.

Last time she was here, Juliette had tried to tell herself that she was responsible for Dante's impending death due to her inaction. This was after she'd tried to hold Faith accountable because of her phrasing. It was stupid. It hadn't been Juliette's fault.

In the woods, when she and Johnny and Julien had been interrupted by Drew, the injury on his arm had been so mesmerizing. There it was, the pain and blood and unbearable mortality of it all staring her straight in the face, and what had she done? How had she dealt with it?

She'd treated Drew like he was already dead. She'd told herself he was already dead. He had to be, right? So when he was there, scared and hurt in front of them, she couldn't feel too bad about it, because he was already dead. It wasn't a horrifying thing, just a sort of sad one. It had to be. And helping him was a waste, because hope was a waste, because it had to be. It had to be. And that was the right way to think, wasn't it? She was being cold and cruel, the face everyone saw under the mask, and it was right.

And so, it was so very easy to turn her decision to help out into a bargaining chip. She extracted a promise from Julien, and that meant she could assist and it wasn't emotional or weak to do so. It was pragmatic. She was getting something in return for almost nothing. A cunning tactical ploy. A smart move. The people watching, the people whose opinion she was so desperately courting, they wouldn't see her being sentimental. They'd see her being cool and logical and slick and manipulative. It wouldn't even matter to them that all she'd ever asked of Julien in return was some hypothetical kindness.

When finally their paths had crossed again, her and Julien, Drew was dead. Juliette had been right. It was inevitable, and he died, and it shouldn't have been scary or bad because she'd known it from the start and told herself again and again, but it hadn't quite worked. She'd tried to talk to Julien about it, then, because he'd been so invested the first time. He'd given what seemed like his all to save Drew, but that had been before he too took a life, and when Juliette had brought up the demise of their erstwhile companion, Julien had brushed over it and on to other matters. He was over it, and she hadn't expected that, and it had at least given her pause and then Valerija had been there to upset her and spare her further analysis, but she'd been so ready to play the parasite again and let Julien's grief or hurt give her some closure of her own and he'd had none to show and she hadn't understood what was wrong with her for him to be over it like that when she still had to try to talk about it.

Who had she been kidding? Juliette couldn't hate Erika. She couldn't hate Connor when he abandoned her. She'd wished him well, and she'd seen herself in him and tried to push him towards the promise he'd had within the whole time, because once again she'd fantasized her own future and prospects in him. So why had it been a surprise when he abandoned her?

It was because he'd gotten there first. No, he'd gotten there at all. She'd said he'd be a good winner, and maybe he would. He probably would. He was smart and slick and unlike Juliette, he wasn't faking. He wasn't lying, or not as much as she was. He had that selfish edge that let him toss everyone else overboard with not a care for how they landed or whether they knew how to float.

Juliette couldn't even hate Quinn. No, she couldn't even dislike Quinn. She couldn't even bring herself to be mildly upset at Quinn, and maybe on some level that was the Juliette everyone else saw under the mask speaking, totally unperturbed by the fact that the girl she was talking to had killed a bunch of their peers and crucified them or whatever, but that wasn't really it.

Quinn had suffered everything that Juliette had feared. The girl had been hurt and ruined and maybe that wasn't why she'd done what she had but did it matter? She'd been subjected to torment for who she was and nobody had saved her. Nobody had reached out. Juliette had been too sacred to do anything at school when there might be consequences for her, and yet when she'd apologized, late and largely meaningless as it was, Quinn had talked with her. They'd had a good conversation, but leave it to Quinn to be more insightful than she had any right to be. She'd looked straight through Juliette, laid her bare long before she knew the truth herself. Quinn had been able to step into her shoes enough to come closer to seeing her than anyone else had, and Juliette wasn't sure she'd returned the favor.

She wished she'd done better by Quinn. She wished she'd been able to thank the girl for everything, to accept the gift she was offered. She wished she'd been able to reciprocate. While she was wishing, she wished she'd thrown caution to the wind and been there when she could've been, at school. Maybe that would've made all the difference in the world. The one time, the one time Juliette might've done some real good, and she'd been too afraid.

She was pretty sure Quinn hadn't killed anybody else after their talk. She wondered if what had happened next was somehow her fault.

Somewhere in her walk, Juliette had finally run out of tears. The dry sobs were still there, but beginning to abate. She didn't feel better. Just... less. For a long time, she'd thought those things were more or less synonymous. When she squashed how she really felt in order to wear that easy, lifelike smile, that was functionally equivalent to truly being alright, wasn't it? It had worked for her. It had worked well enough that she'd planned, from more or less the moment she awoke here, to turn her life towards its perpetual pursuit.

Yes, there it was at last: that one detail that couldn't be swept under the rug. Juliette was planning, when she won, to join the very ranks of those responsible for this greatest of atrocities.

It was how she'd always lived her life. If something was tough, or scary, or out of reach, then the only thing to do was to become one with it, to try harder and strive further and overcome and comprehend. She engaged with school through the lens of student council, and she loved it because it let her feel like she had a say. The decisions were meaningless. Their power was laughable. She didn't even care what she was deciding, just that she was. It had comprised some of the happiest moments of her life. The campaign, too. She'd always known that it didn't matter. She'd known all along that the president didn't do anything really. She hadn't been lying to Lavender in the aftermath, hadn't just been salving her own ego. And yet, those weeks spent preparing and dreaming and planning, they'd made her feel so alive. She'd found her purpose, spending hours pouring over the speeches of a president who revolted and fascinated her in equal measure just to try to distill the elements of populism into a speech pitch perfect for a high school auditorium. And she'd been on the right track, beaten only by a home field advantage she could no more have predicted than begrudged.

So, then, the crux of it was this: the terrorists had snatched her life away, so the only way to take it back was to become the one force powerful enough to exert such control. She would join them and she would tell herself it was okay, she would kill her emotions, kill herself in all but physical truth, but in so doing she would become ascendant. She would become more, and she would understand, and it wouldn't be scary or hurt anymore because she would finally be the very biggest, baddest, worst thing in the world. She would be the one feared, and that didn't matter to her in itself, but the monster didn't shake imagining what was lurking in its closet, now did it?

And even now, even at this juncture when she'd failed to take a single life, when she'd fallen flat on her face at the threshold, Juliette yearned for it. She needed control more than she'd needed anything she'd ever had in her life, needed it in a way that made the growing hunger of subsistence rations feel like nothing.

But she couldn't have it, because she couldn't kill, let alone win. If she couldn't kill Marceline, if she couldn't kill one classmate, then how could she help orchestrate and carry out mass murder? But there was nothing else for her. She'd done her best to stamp out every other route, every safety valve, every alternate option. There was no going back. There was no going home. She would never get anything she'd wanted if she did, and it didn't even matter besides because there was physically no going home if she couldn't kill anyone.

There was no way out. She was absolutely, utterly powerless, because even she hadn't known herself. And now, now it was far too late to change. It was too late to fix things, to be good, to dedicate the last days of her life to helping others or easing pain. She didn't even want that—well, she wanted it to happen, but she couldn't be the one to do it.

Juliette stood at the far edge of town, at the end of the rough dirt path that led past all the houses, and stared into no man's land, out into the distance where the boat that had been the start of this entire wretched journey still lay crushed upon the rocks.

She'd set her path. Come hell or high water, her bed was made. She would do it. Somehow, she would kill herself enough to get her hands on the controls, to be the one in charge. She hated it, but what else could she do?

All she had left to cling to was her crazy, impossible, vile, unconscionable goal.

((Juliette Sargent continued in Click-Boom Then It Happened))