Nobody's Side

#1

She’d closed the door behind her, taken a few steps into the room, and it was only then when the corpse on the floor made itself visible.

((Michelle White, continued from Hiding From the Truth))

She was fairly sure someone had told her about it — there’d been words, murmurs about something in this side-room — but Michelle wasn’t sure whether that was the reason why she didn’t streak at the sight, restart whatever breakdown this was. She’d heard death — seen death so much at this point that it seemed that she could deal with it now. The image of Ms. Horton, Mr. Shaw being shot down was now thankfully just an image. Morton’s corpse, on the floor of the apartment, still reminded her of what she did but now that thought seemed easier to process too. It seemed at long last that Michelle had found her footing in this place. Finally had gotten used to the atrocities.

And all it took was losing Anvi.

She kept stepping forward, eventually found that her body had moved from the door to right above the cor- above Calista’s corpse. She stayed there for a while, looked down, focused her vision on what laid below. Calista was… someone Michelle wished she could’ve known better. She seemed nice, at least from the outside. She didn’t have the best views on things, she was someone who Michelle would have gotten into an argument with if they ever talked about refugees, but… she didn’t know. Michelle would’ve wanted that conversation anyway. She would’ve liked the chance to maybe make her change her mind, make her views just as good as the rest of her seemed to be.

But now she couldn’t.

And it felt so strange. Her mind kept thinking about Calista in the present tense but yet here was her body. She’d died… a day ago? Yesterday? She wasn’t sure. With all the times the man on the speakers had read death out it was getting harder to tell when in particular someone had died. Maybe. She didn’t know. She just hoped that that was the case. If she was losing track of time here, then…

She didn’t know.

It wouldn’t have been the only thing she’d lost.

She walked past the corpse, went to the wall closest to it. She stood there, for a moment, kicked a knife out of the way, before letting herself sit down, stay there, collapse, under it all.

...Why had she come here again?...

That was right, to… decompress, be alone. Break down in a place where none of the other three would persecute her. This place worked for that and it seemed that nobody was following her (for better or worse), but… she didn’t know. Now she wasn’t sure whether she was in this room to do what she came to do anymore. She was here, completely alone, but now it seemed as if she was okay. She was willing to work with the fact that Anvi was gone forever now. She’d made a scene of needing space and she probably looked insane to everybody outside and now it just turned out that she only needed a second to suddenly be able to go back out, pretend that what happened hadn’t just happened.

And now she was left here, in the room, with Calista.

And the question had changed to: what now?

Because… there was more than one of that question. Honestly she could apply it to basically… basically anything to do with what was happening right now. She’d been placed here, told to kill all her classmates if she ever wanted to see home again. She’d freaked, broken down and attached herself to people she’d barely known. Things went bad between them, there’d been a fight, and in trying to stop it one of them had been laid dead by her own hands. She and the other ran to the church, found a place to stay, only for Michelle to wake up with her best friend dead and everyone in the room suddenly completely alien to her. She’d had a plan, she knew what she needed to do here, but now she didn’t. Now, for the first time since she found herself in that junkyard, she was well and truly alone.

So now what?

What could even be done, at this point?

Because the plan — the thing she knew she needed to do — was well and truly as dead as the corpse beside her. She’d had an idea to unite the class around her, find a place where they all could live, convince them all that there was absolutely no sense in killing each other just because the enemy had told them to and that if they worked together they could build something here that would last for years to come. They could take this town away from the Americans, rebuild it as Saint Editha’s. Maybe there were people who would have needed convincing, maybe even at that point there would’ve been people fully willing to harm, kill one another, but she was sure that they could’ve seen the light. She was sure — maybe even now — that there was good in everyone here, that if she said the right words they could be persuaded to lay down their arms, stand with her for something that… maybe could’ve meant something, as non-specific as it was.

And then she’d killed Morton.

And everything had fallen apart after that. Her mind had… lost direction, become like putty, molded itself to be whatever shape Ashley dictated. She’d been proven wrong about everyone here, found out that maybe there wasn’t as much good in her class than she would’ve liked there to be. Her will, her voice had become hoarse, had lost the ability to say anything of value. Even if she’d had the opportunity to at any point before now, she wouldn’t have been able to pitch, to convince others of what needed to be done. She’d fail to find the words, there would be a minute spent in silence as everyone in the room cringed, and then she’d shrink into the shadows, say that what she meant to say meant nothing, join the rest of the room in regretting letting her try and speak.

And what would happen now? If she walked out, told Kian, Pippa, Molly that the game was going to stop, how would they react?

She had asked the question intending on not knowing the answer, but going through it in her head she realized the truth. She knew. The answer was as clear as day. They wouldn’t laugh, but they’d shoot her down as if they had. They’d say that it was impossible now. Maybe Molly — maybe even Pippa — would make it outright, say that they wouldn’t be willing to follow a plan led by Michelle. Because she looked insane and out of everyone in that room she was the only one who’d killed. One of the people in her class who had decided that there was merit in what the Americans were saying. A hypocrite. Someone to be feared, mistrusted.

Because that was what they were doing. She wasn’t going to play dumb about that fact. Even with the blur, the undecipherable mess that was the moments before she entered this room she could feel how they were addressing her. Like someone who’d meant it when she’d pushed Morton into his knife, a person who had decided that they were going to betray their country just because they were told to. A person who clearly didn’t mean what they were saying at all no matter how clear it was that she genuinely believed that there still was a chance, someone who would stab them in the back while pretending to be their leader, their friend. The girl who ran the school newspaper who always annoyed people with her questions and who never knew how she came off. That one person who always ruined the fun. An annoyance. A threat. Nothing more.

And maybe...

“Maybe I’m on nobody’s side…”

The words had pulled her back into the room. Made her pause, for a second, question why and how she’d just said that. She knew the song and she recognized the lyrics but she hadn’t even been thinking of them until they’d thrown themselves out of her mouth.

There was a warmth, though, in singing, letting those words come out of her mouth for only Calista to hear. Maybe it was because they fit. Maybe it was because she was genuinely becoming as insane as the people out there were making her out to be and maybe this was her mind’s way of telling her the truth, saying to her what needed to be said. She was on nobody’s side because nobody wanted her on their side. She had a plan and the plan was on a sinking ship and yet she was still pretending like it had a chance of working, that maybe if the holes on the bottom of the hull were patched up it’d be flawless, as good as new. She was alone now that Ashley had left her and until she finally realized that the only way out of this place was giving up hope and ending things herself before someone else did it for her. There was nothing good in staying here. The best option was to go.

…

…

Her throat still felt good from the singing, though. She didn’t know why and she wasn’t sure if singing again would really do or change anything, but…

Maybe…

…

Maybe it’d make things better.

Maybe it’d give her a little bit of happiness before she grabbed that knife on the ground and…

She didn’t want to think about it. She just wanted to…

Wanted to…

“Everybody’s playingggggg... the game…”

She closed her eyes. Clutched her stomach.

“...But nobody’s rules areeeeeeeee… the same…”

She straightened her back out. Kept her eyes closed, but stared at the wall anyway.

“Nobody’s on nobodddddddddy’s side…”

It felt good. Embracing the song, deciding to go along with it since nobody here was watching had been the best plan she’d made this past day.

“Better learn to go ittttttttttt… alone…”

Probably the only good plan, as well.

“Recognize you’re out onnnnnnnnn… your own…”

And…

“Nobody’s on nobodddddddddy’s side...”

Now she couldn’t quit, couldn’t she?

Because in typical herself fashion Michelle had… maybe given herself a reason, a method to keep going basically essentially without even trying to do so. The song fit her, somehow. It was something she’d discovered while trawling through her grandma’s treasures and something she had to keep secret, make sure she didn’t sing while other people were around. She… admittedly wasn’t 100% sure of what the song’s context was — Chess was long dead by the time she’d been born — but it was one of her favourite musicals because it was exactly the type that you could get the whole story through just through listening to the songs. There weren’t enough like those, nowadays.

Never would be, at least for Michelle.

But anyway getting back to the point the point was that the song fit her far more than the ones she’d show her followers, adding “haha me” onto the end. She was here, on her own, after everything in her life had fallen around her. She had a plan, the plan had failed (if it had ever even gotten off the ground) and now she was unsure what to do, how to even go about things at this point. She wanted to believe in people and had expected there to be good in them but she’d been proven wrong twice now. Both by others and by herself. She’d hit what was probably her lowest moment and she wasn’t sure which way to go from this point on, how to even cope with everything now that everything had betrayed her.

And there was an answer, maybe. Go it alone. Accept the fact that nobody was on her side and she wasn’t on anybody’s side either and just deal with it. Keep moving forward. Do what she needed to do and don’t let anybody stop her.

Good plan?

…

…

She didn’t know. It felt like something she couldn’t reach, clutch, grab and pull around her, something she couldn’t go out and face the world again with, not just yet. She paused, for a bit, felt the song start swirling towards its second chorus.

...The song had been moving on in her head without her even realizing it. God, was this place getting to her. Anyway:

“...Never make a promiseeeeeee or plan.”

She took a breath. Let the air go through, almost to her stomach.

“Take a little love whereeeeeee you can.”

She thought of Ashley. Of Galahad. They were still out there, right? She’d find them, maybe. If she started soon, took Kian and maybe Pippa and got out of this church maybe she could find them, get them with her before they became like Anvi.

“Nobody’s on nobodddddddddy’s side...”

Wasn’t much of one, but it was still an idea, maybe.

“Never stay too long in your bed…”

Another breath.

“Never lose your heart, useeeeeeeeeee your head…”

And maybe that was for the best.

“Nobody’s on nobodddddddddy’s side...”

Because there had been a plan. An idea to maybe show the Americans who was who, give them a message that those of Saint Editha were better. Michelle would’ve… rounded up as many people as she could’ve, found a place for all of them to stay — somewhere where they all could’ve been safe. She’d go out and find everyone else, after that. Convince them that the light was still in them. Give them her plan of making a community, making sure that nobody here decided to kill one another. It wasn’t a perfect idea — she would’ve been the first to say that — but it was a good enough one to start with, at least until she found people who were smart and could make her idea better.

And then there’d been a fight, in front of her. One she’d ended in a way that she didn’t ever intend or want.

And others had joined her. People who the man on the announcements had named. Maybe their circumstances were the same as hers, but she knew that being as blind as that would only lead her down more ruin. The truth was, there were people out there who didn’t have any light left in them. There were people who had listened to the Americans and decided that they were going to heed to their beck and call.

And the others that had been named, the ones who had died, they wouldn’t be able to come back. They wouldn’t be able to be a part of her plan now. Daniel, Adni, Rue, they were all people smarter than her. They could’ve all made her plan better. Now they couldn’t. Now she had to make do with what she had.

Because there was still a chance.

She could still get everyone left. Anyone who still wanted to listen to her, the people who still had something good in them. She could maybe find a place here and she could settle down with them, create a real community. There were definitely flaws, but those could be put on the backburner. The point was that she needed to stop this game. The Americans needed to be shown that even if they didn’t cope, they were still British. In the end of it all, they wouldn’t give up their souls just because they’d been told to.

And those who had? The ones who would refuse, try to kill her?

She would stop them.

She didn’t know how, she wasn’t sure if she’d be capable of going that far if going that far was what she needed to do, but… whatever it took. She couldn’t let this game be played any longer. She wouldn’t allow her classmates to fall any further than they already had.

So slowly, she stood up, slid herself up the wall. There was still a whole chorus of the song to go, but it wasn’t needed any longer. Staying in here singing would be a minute wasted that she could use out there, maybe doing something, preventing people from dying. Once she was up, sure in herself that she would not fall back down again, she bent over, picked up the knife off the ground and put it in her pocket. She took a step or two forward, made sure they were more steps than lurches, and grabbed for something she hadn’t seen until now, a… hook gun thingy, also laid down on the floor. She turned to the door, after that, started walking towards it. She spent a second looking at Calista one last time — gave last respects to someone she genuinely wished could’ve been in this room with her — and then kept going, made it to where she’d been just a few minutes earlier and paused, on the precipice of turning the doorknob.

She would do what needed to be done. She would get everyone, stop this game, and stop everyone who would try and stop her from making that happen.

Good plan?

…

…

She shook her head. No, not really, but there was no point in trying to think of a better one. There were no good plans anymore.

All she could do was the best with what she had.

((Michelle White, continued back in Hiding From the Truth))