WWSD

[Namira]

((continued from AAAAAAAAAAAA))

Garnet stretched out her arm over the cliff edge. Her reaching hand touched nothing, and then her fingers scraped on a cold surface. She strained a little further, gained purchase on metal. Scrabbling with her fingers, she coaxed her goal into her hand until she could secure a firm grip, and then, bracing herself against the ground with the rest of her body, pulled. The weight was harder to bring up than she'd expected, unwieldy in a way that made very clear just what she was hauling up.

She nearly let go at the halfway point. Nothing good could come of this.

Garnet tugged and rolled in one motion, and the rifle was in her lap.

Erika's rifle.

Who had she killed to get this?

The metal didn't feel so cool any more. It burned.

Eleven dead, at this point. The gun could have belonged to any of them but Amber. Erika destroyed that other rifle, the sniper one she must have killed Katie and Saffron with—don't forget that, Garnet, she killed ten all without your help and you let her do even more—but she'd still been armed. Had Amber even had the opportunity to defend herself?

Garnet looked down at the gun.

Probably not. Erika was too good at this. That Garnet was alive was a twisted kind of mercy. A twisted kind of honour. She hadn't needed to allow Garnet to walk out of the room unscathed, but their history together was enough to spare her where it hadn't all those others. Who knew that all you had to do to make the murderer give you a chance was be her friend for literal fucking years. That was the joke; Erika's idea of paying that back was to not gun her down where she stood. Her reward for letting Erika loose on the island all over again.

Garnet looked down at the gun.

She felt... scorched. Salted earth. Those goals she'd claimed to have had fallen apart at first glance, the first glance that she'd refused to give because she wouldn't like what she saw. All she'd accomplished was not dying. Garnet couldn't even say she'd had a positive effect on all of this. The island was actively worse and more dangerous based on what she'd done. If anything, she'd played the game, staying mostly out of trouble, not biting off more than she could chew, stayed health, and then rolled the dice on Erika not taking her out in order to allow the other girl to thin the field further. What a strategy. Couldn't have planned it better.

The kiss of metal seared underneath her chin.

Garnet sat still.

How far did good intentions count? How much did you trust someone who promised everything and delivered nothing?

If someone else came to Garnet, with the same track record, would she believe a single thing they had to say? Would she think of them as anything other than a murderer-by-proxy?

Her fingers curled, then relaxed.

Maybe not. Probably not. But she wasn't seeing herself from outside, she was seeing herself from inside. She fucked up huge, but she was still here. She had to do better, with the time she had.

WWSD.

More than this.

((continued in Terminal Gardener)