This Carousel Called Life

[Grim Wolf]

"Not everyone was a winner though, as Aurelien Valter faltered under the spotlight and was shot by Blaise d'Aramitz as a result."

Standing in the center of the ring of houses, Daria's hand tightened upon the bat in her hand, and stared up into the sky.

(Daria Bhatia continued from ali bomaye)

Which history class was it where Daria had learned about land bridges? She'd been...shit, how old? Was it elementary school, or junior high? Couldn't have been high school, she'd have remembered that.

Didn't matter. It was the concept she was trying to remember. The land bridge that had once existed between Asia and America.

No, she'd been 12, she remembered now; it had been the year after her family had taken their trip to the Florida Keys, driving across the 7-Mile Bridge. Daria had been enraptured by that bridge--by the endless span of water in every direction, by this fragile man-made thing which let them race across it. That had been fresh in her mind when she'd learned about the land bridge, and felt it sear itself into her mind. How spectacular she'd found that simple man-made bridge: how much more spectacular a rut of stone across the sea, connecting two disparate continents. She'd wondered how long that bridge had still been traversible, as the ocean closed in upon it. She wondered what it had been like to be the last travelers upon that bridge, surrounded by an ocean getting closer and closer, day by day.

Perhaps no different than she felt, trudging forth as death flooded in the cracks around her. Fewer and fewer places to be safe, on this Island. Fewer and fewer ways to keep moving, as the flood waters closed in ahead.

Justice. That was the word that kept her moving. She'd first started toying with the concept as she'd fallen asleep around the fire, listening to Carrie with her madness at bay, listening to Connor with his every word overripe with privilege. But it had kept her moving long before that: it had kept her from sobbing when'd woken up all alone, with death in her head and in her eyes and in her heart.

SOTF was a rigged game. Justice meant saving as many people as she could, to keep people like Steph and Carrie and Willow from getting destroyed by this miserable game. Justice meant ending this game, and destroying the men and women who perpetrated it. And justice also meant destroying the people on this island who played along gleefully. People like Blaise.

She was sure of all those things...but nothing else. And even the things she felt sure of seemed more and more fragile, as the days (and her fellow students) wound down to zero.

[Melusine]

Willow pushed a sticky lump of hair back underneath the hairband. She wondered how many days she had left before she could take shower. She assumed this was the penultimate day, but it could also be the last. It was a good 50/50 that the game was going to end today or tomorrow, but she would prefer the game ending today. It just made more sense thematically or something.

In the same breath, Willow's fingers pushed against her wound, snapping her back in reality. She reminded herself that she wasn't going to make it. There wasn't any point in hoping for a future when she'd been dead for years. There was no hope for her because she made the choice to live like this. She wasn't going to live because she effectively couldn't. Even if some people had wanted her to, nobody quite understood her.

Katrina had been the closest. She had heard the most and she still asked for Willow to try to go back home. Katrina couldn't be blamed because, well, Willow was a liar. Her hand moved from her move to her stomach. Again, she pressed.

((Willow continued here))

Sierra's gun, her gun, was swaying against her hips as she walked toward Daria. Willow wondered which piece of Daria she would take from her, and vice-versa. Everyone had taken from her, and they were all dead, she wondered how much time Daria would take to finally croak. She expected it around noon this day. Willow was a fast acting cancer with the tendency to burn people even if she meant to do the opposite.

She sighed.

"Si- Daria?" She whimpered. "Who do you think will join us?"

Willow legitimately asked. Ace wouldn't, and Willow didn't want him here anyways. He would be better off alone, proven by the fact that he had killed Justin. She was still vaguely angry about that, but Blaise and Erika were still alive therefore Willow was... content. She hoped they picked up on the killing. There was a good chance they would kill each other, but at the same time, she hoped they would make it to final showdown.

She was a simple girl: she just wanted the person who deserved it most to win.

"I can't think," another truth, "about anyone that would join us. I've been laying low for the past thirteen days and I honestly don't remember most of our classmates."

[Grim Wolf]

Silent and still as a statue, staring up into the bright sky with the echoes of Announcements fading away. Silent and still and focused like someone on a death march, only trying to put one foot in front of the other. Because if she looked up-

"Si-Daria?" Willow asked. "Who do you think will join us?"

-she'd never make it.

Daria turned slowly. She tried to smile, managed it, stopped almost as soon as it spread across her face. It had been fake. Transparently fake. It had felt like a rictus grimace upon her face, painful as faking a smile of agreement for her mom.

She didn't want to be fake. She didn't want to be real.

"Maybe no one," she said, as her fake smile faded. Then it came back, real and terribly sad, as she laughed. "Probably no one. Like you said. Can't...think of anyone."

That hadn't always been the case. Carrie. Connor. Chris. Tony. Aliya. Steph. But Carrie and Connor had left her. Daria had left Chris. Aliya and Daria had put Tony to rest, and gone their separate ways. And Steph...

"I talked to Blaise," Daria said. "Before she...killed Steph." She paused. "Days before, not like...right before. When I first...got here." She waved vaguely around them. "She heard me shouting at Danyuh." She waved vaguely at the sky. "Wanted to know...why. Told me I was...absolving her."

"She killed before," Daria snapped, and there was anger in her voice. "She didn't...start killing, 'cause of me. Just pretended it absolved her. House always wins, so why not just...play?"

Anger had given way to guilt, to self-pity, to shame. She didn't want to feel any of those things. She couldn't pretend she wasn't feeling them. Or maybe she could. She didn't want to. She was tired of pretending. Tired of acting.

"I don't get it, Will," Daria sighed. "Don't get it from Blaise. Don't get it from Ace. Don't get it from Erika. Didn't understand it with Quinn. Why are we killing each other? Why aren't we putting our focus on the people who put us here?" She tapped the collar on her neck again. "Why are we playing along?"

[Melusine]

"Because..." Willow paused. She distinctly remembered this discussion. She wasn't sure if her anemoia was caused by the sepia-tinted lenses her brain was carrying around, but this conversation felt very familiar. It was as if she had already said her piece about this in this exact situation.

Just instead of Daria, it was someone else. Maybe Sierra. Maybe Katrina. Maybe Faith. Maybe someone whose name ceased to exist once Willow arrived on the island. She had been living in a liminal space for the past two weeks, and she wondered how much of her memories was now filled with these images she had seen. It was easy to point fingers and to blame others, but Willow knew she was at fault here. She had never really cared or appreciated her life until she arrived here, and even if she still didn't care about it in the latest, there was a strange uptick in her will to live.

She had already been here. She already had this conversation. She already lived this. It was familiar. A hug. A kiss. A squeeze. It all ended the same really. When events started turning into a cycle, it only meant that the ending was near. Time was turning into a circle, a perfect plump sphere that managed to elude her. The ending and the beginning were connected in a way that Willow's mind struggled to understand.

"Because," she repeated, "we don't know any better."

She included herself in that statement. She wasn't better than the Erika's and the Blaise's and the Ace's of this world, but she wasn't worst. They were on the same scale, but not on the same measurements. Near but far.

"I mean, it's... really easy to ruin their game." She said. "Very."

She shrugged. Willow wondered who was watching. She assumed it was no-one. There had to be something more interesting going on than two dead girls discussing of their imminent deaths.

"They gave us a get-out-of-jail card with the fire rule," she raised her index, "and then there's the one-kill rule which you can ruin," she raised her middle finger, "and finally, there's always the twenty-four rule which is admittedly harder to achieve."

With her ring finger up, she had listed the three easiest way to ruin their game. Or at least, their reputation. Their infamy wasn't hard to pick apart, but nobody wanted to do that. It implied giving up. Willow didn't want to win. She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to make her life better because it couldn't get any better than this.

But, she wasn't doing anything to prove it. She shrugged. Apathy was a nice blanket. She put her fingers down.

"I... get it." She confessed. "I get why they're doing it. I don't think they're to blame. I just... I don't know. I just really don't care about what happens, you know? It never mattered in the first place."

[Grim Wolf]

"Because we don't know any better."

But that was the source of Daria's endless cycles of emotion, that was the knot she couldn't entangle, the one she'd been picking at since she woke up. Why didn't they know better? Why wasn't it obvious that every blow struck against your fellow student was a blow wasted? How did they not see that in a rigged game, the only correct choice is to turn your focus on the ones doing the rigging? Why couldn't she convince them?

"Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." And that was all Daria had done: woke up in grief and terror, clung to revelation, failed to preach her revelation, questioned that revelation, plunged into grief and terror again until a new revelation arose to comfort her. Over and over and over again.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression-)

Not acceptance. Never acceptance. This game always had been, and always would be, unacceptable.

And dying?

Dying was always part of the bargain, long before they strapped a bomb to my neck. This just sped up the timeline.

Why won't you go into Stephanie's house?

Her eyes flickered to the house she wouldn't enter. Willow was still talking to her. The actress part of Daria's brain was still listening to her--the one that attended to the stage, to her cues, so she could enter the moment when she was ready.

But she was so, so tired of acting. Another cycle she couldn't escape.

"I just really don't care about what happens, you know? It never mattered in the first place."

Daria looked back over her shoulder. Her head did not snap towards Willow, but she moved a little too quickly, a little too presently, for her scattered state. There was a bit more focus in her eyes. There was a bit more focus in her head. Time to perform again?

All the world's a stage

And all art is fake gardens with real frogs, that's not the fucking point.

Isn't it?

Meaning what?

Another cycle, another repetition, round and round and round we go, and where we stop, nobody knows

"It matters," Daria said. "We matter."

Boring, boring, you've been here before.

"Had this argument with Quinn, when the game was still pretty fresh," Daria said, louder than she intended, arguing with that needling voice in her brain. "Figuring it all out. Zeroes and ones. Who matters, who doesn't. Quinn claiming she's some kind of ruthless killer who never cared about us." A short, sharp laugh. "Quinn fucking Abert spat that shit after only a few days. God damn, Will, I hate Danyuh's fucking guts and I hate the rest of his lackeys, too, but they've got us fucking pegged, don't they? Know just how to turn the screws to make us go fucking crazy for them. "I wanna be the one!" Like we get a say in who lives and who dies." She paused, laughed again, and the sound of it crunched, like broken glass underfoot. "Well. Maybe we do. Get to decide who dies, at least. Who moves up the timeline. Who moves down. Buy ourselves a couple more days. Maybe if we kill enough people, we get the prize!" On this last line, her voice rose up to a high, wheedling pitch, like a child pleading for a new toy. A moment later, and her face was so full of scorn it seemed to radiate heat.

"It matters, Will!" Daria growled. "What everyone does. You broke Ace's window, you didn't try to shoot him, that was him being a crazy fucker. And Quinn chose to play it like she was better than everyone, like she could've done this without them, like she was in control. And Blaise-"

She broke off. Her eyes flickered to Stephanie's house. Her grip tightened on her bat.

"It matters," she whispered. "We matter." She closed her eyes against tears, remembering Steph and Carrie.

Dead and gone.

She swallowed, opened her eyes, looked at Will. She looked at Will. "You matter."

[Melusine]

"I-"

It was an atavistic response. She had to hold herself back. If nothing was, if her dead allies' ghostly hands weren't grasping her at the moment, Willow would have jumped on Daria. She would have and she wouldn't have regretted it. She dugged her black nails into her weapon, putting the butt of the gun on the ground. It propped her up, stopping her from making a carefully planned rash and reckless decision.

"I don't matter, Daria," she squeezed through her teeth, her breathing whistling, "because I don't want to matter."

She didn't matter because she was dead and she was dead because she didn't matter. Nothing in her life had mattered until this point and it wouldn't start because of how she would die. She never mattered: not when everyone left her, not when swallowed a bottle of pills, not when she felt his fucking hands on her, not after she killed Sierra and not after she let Katrina died. She didn't matter because mattering meant that she cared about it - she didn't, and that was the thesis of her existence - and she never cared to begin with.

Her gnosis laid where Willow had dug her grave years ago. She didn't destruct everything that held her back to pretend that she mattered in this world. She could create new bonds but there was no point in doing so. Every bridge that was once built had been destroyed in a mixture of gun powder and blood.

She could only create if she were live, and she wouldn't in a thousand of years admit that she wanted that.

"And for Ace," she pauses, her body's weight pushing down on the gun. "I did that because," she wasn't sure if she was supposed to say that, "I wanted to make sure he deserved to go home..."

She pressed her fingers back into her sore. A reminder. Pain was a reminder. She needed it more than she needed this conversation.

"And I got my answer."

[Grim Wolf]

"I-"

Stephanie Willow was rigid in front of her, like a deer in the headlights. She leaned heavily on her gun as though it were the only thing keeping her upright. Daria wondered if she looked the same, staring at Willow, waiting for her answer.

"I don't matter, Daria," Will said at last, her whistling, ragged words so forced that it seemed like they were being squeezed from her. "Because I don't want to matter."

Daria closed her eyes. She's already said it aloud, and she had no inclination to repeat herself

why not? You've done it often enough, you sad little girl

but these terrorist fucks really did know what they were doing. Will--sweet as sugar on the outside, tough as nails on the inside Willow--was standing here, saying she didn't matter. Saying it like she believed it, too. What the fuck had this game done to her?

Same thing it's done to you.

She squeezed her eyes against the prickling of tears. No. She couldn't cry. She refused to cry. She had broken her oath once, but she would not do it again. Not until she'd gotten justice for Stephanie. Not until she'd gotten justice for them all.

How are you gonna do that? You're a girl with a bat who's running out of food. You're not a superhero. You're not larger than life. You're weak. You're small.

"And for Ace?" Will said, with that same fractured voice. "I did that because...I wanted to make sure he deserved to go home..."

Daria could not quite bring herself to open her eyes.

"And I got my answer."

So much Daria wanted to say. So many good lines running through her head. You need to steal the scene, make it pivot, make it pop. Time for one of your famous monologues, time to be the badass bitch, the fearless fool whose maybe not so foolish, time to wow the audience with your unexpected wisdom, to make Will see that she matters, that she deserves to go home, that everyone deserves to go home-

Even Blaise?

Daria dropped the bat to one side, and brought both hands to her face for a moment. She drew a shuddering breath.

Then she lowered her hands, and she looked up at Willow. She walked towards her slowly, came to a stop just in front of her.

"So do you, Will," Daria said.

And hugged her.

[Melusine]

"Stop."

She clinged to Daria. Her nails dug small crescents in her flesh. She shuddered, her knees suddenly weak. Her breathing picked up in speed, unable to slow down as the beating drum in her chest tried to show the audience its rhythm. Her fingers kept digging, clinging, pulling.

"Stop it."

The words came out without the necessary inputs. Maybe Willow was simple the output rather than the input, maybe somewhere along the path she had crossed the wrong wires. Her entire body quivered. It was weak. It was small.

"Stop it, please stop."

Her face was wet, it was dripping down her chin from lips. Blood or tears, it didn't matter though she would have preferred the former. Her eyes were shut. She didn't want to see Daria. She didn't want to see Daria seeing her seeing Daria. She didn't want it.

"I don't- I don't matter." She whimpered. "I never did."

The science behind the memorizing of these words were quite simple. Hours spent drawing both on paper and on skin, it was easy to remember them. Mantras spent on herself rather than in words. The pain made the chorus and it made the melody: it was vital for the entirety of the song. It was a reminder, and it was a sign, and it meant that the ending and the beginning were near. She was going to die here.

"I don't matter, I can't matter."

It was unlike the usual piques.

She hated it.

"So stop it, please."

[Grim Wolf]

"Stop," Willow whispered, and clung to Daria harder, and Daria didn't know what to about that, didn't know what to do with any of it, her arms were around Willow but it wasn't Willow she was looking at. Her eyes were on Stephanie's house.

"Stop it, please stop."

Sagging in her arms (sagging with relief you could do that once remember), leaning more on her than the gun, begging her to let go, making no effort to free herself, and Daria's eyes were open, still looking at the house behind her where her friend's body rotted.

Like you'll rot like she'll rot like we all will rot.

What the fuck are you doing, Daria?

"I don't- I don't matter." Willow's voice was even more ragged than before. "I never did."

We were always ones.

Daria's eyes were on Stephanie's house.

You don't matter.

Fuck that.

You have saved no one. You will save no one. You're just an actress on a stage, trying to put on a show. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Shakespeare was a closeted bisexual Englishman who lived 400 years ago, he's got fuck-all to do with me, but if he was playwright or a king or a peasant or a prosititute or a shit-kicker he would still matter just like I matter.

Stephanie died because of you.

Stephanie die because of Blaise and Blaise killed her because of them.

She was screaming for you. She thought you would save her. You told her you would. Lying and lying and lying. Can't turn it off. You were never going to make it as an actress. You were never going to survive this. You were never going to matter

"I don't matter, I can't matter. So stop it. Please."

You don't know how to stop.

Daria closed her eyes.

You lost Carrie you couldn't reach Quinn you couldn't reach Chris you couldn't reach anyone you're fake you're nothing you're no one you. don't. matter.

She squeezed Willow tighter, and drew in a shuddering breath.

"You don't have to listen to me," Daria said. "You don't have to believe me. I don't get to tell you what you think. I don't, and neither does anyone else. "

A moment's silence.

"But you don't get to tell me what I think either, Will."

Just a hint of a smile in her words, past the hint of tears.

"You don't have to matter to you if you don't want to. You don't get to decide if you matter to me."

It all matters. It always mattered. Carrie, Tony, Aliya, Chris...Amelia, Connor...hell, even Quinn.

Even Blaise?

"I can stop saying it, though. If you need me to." She paused for a moment. "I can stop hugging you, too, but I might call you a tease. What, a girl has one trauma response and all offers are off the table?"

Too brash. Too gaudy. Too raw. She was trying for playfulness and she wasn't reaching it; she heard the wildness in her own voice, like the feral snarl of an animal buried beneath other sounds, so you didn't quite understand what you were hearing.

Maybe that was okay. Maybe she wanted to be wild, unrestrained, unfiltered. Maybe she needed to stop acting.

We all matter. We always have. We always will. No matter what they do to us.

No matter what we do to us.

[Melusine]

Willow pulled back for a second, raising her hand from her wound to her mouth. Her bloodied fingers, dried and wet, smelled like copper. She still pressed them against her lips, her tongue dipping outside to taste herself.

Copper.

She kept walking backward, her tears flowing down into the mess her mouth had become. The blood and the tears and the sweat had become a mass named Willow, and that girl didn't want to be here anymore. She was tired. Nobody listened. She just wanted the right person to go home, but nobody wanted to.

She also didn't want to matter, but the world always decided to push and churn the knife in her wound. Not to twist it because Willow didn't even deserve them. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, painting a new picture unto herself.

"I'm just tired," she confessed, "I don't want to be here anymore but I don't..."

She leaned back, squeezing Daria.

"I don't want to go home."

She squeezed Daria again. This time, laying her head in the crook of her neck. She could take a bite here. She wondered how Daria would taste. She breathed Daria in, filling her scent in her lung. She smelled exactly how she had expected: not good. But it was better than empty lungs.

"I need to get my bike." She breathed out, slowly. "It looks dumb as hell."

[Grim Wolf]

Willow, stumbling back from her. Daria, hands slumping slowly to her side. Too much emotion on her face, too uncontained, too wild. She saw that wildness reflected back at her in Willow's face. Both of them almost feral. They could have done anything. Become anything.

Then Willow leaned back towards her, squeezing her. Without thinking, Daria squeezed tighter, breathing deep the sweaty, bitter, slightly-spicy spell of a woman who had almost died at least once. Desperate for relief. Wanted to hold onto her. Desperate for her.

But she wasn't relieved. She would never be relieved. Not after Stephanie. No matter how good Willow felt in her arms. No matter how good it felt to not be alone.

For a moment, she felt comically small (the same fight, over and over: who matters, who doesn't). For a moment, she felt absurdly large (arguing with the fundamental stuff of reality and humanity, about meaning and virtue and life). For a moment, she felt like she wasn't herself (why was a smalltime high school actress with dreams of the big stage arguing about the meaning of life?). For a moment, she felt too much like herself (how many times did she have to make people see the systems that consigned them to their place, regardless of their worth). For a moment, she was pulled in all directions at once, with no idea who she was supposed to be.

The moment passed, and Daria grinned fiercely into Willow's neck, her breath hot against her skin. Daria never knew who she was supposed to me. But she always knew what she was supposed to do. She just had to find the right role to do it.

"I'll give you a hand," Daria said. "Don't want you collapsing on me, Will."

Willow mattered. Daria mattered. Whatever else was true, Daria knew that. And while she still had breath in her lungs and strength in her limbs, Daria would do what she could to help her. To help them both.

(Daria Bhatia continued elsewhere)

[Melusine]

Willow put her fist against her mouth, biting at her knuckles softly. She wondered if she would fall apart. She usually fell apart in these moments, when she was injured and bleeding. She already cried today, it only meant that there would be more tears later. Willow didn't want this.

She didn't want any of this. She just wanted to disappear, to become see-through, to forget that she once was and become something else. She bit herself again, this time a little bit more.

Her heart pulsing through her wounds was making a pleasant rhythm.

"Hehahahaha," she cackled softly, "I'll try Daria."

She pushed forward her bike. It looked dumb as hell with the little fires on its side and the pink frilly things on the handle. She really want to make fun of it to Daria, point out its stupid design and guffaws.

"I'll try."

((Willow continued in the next thread.))