Don't Talk

[Pippi]

((Bethan Gayle continued from Someone Who Needs Me))

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was dead.

Bethan repeated the words, over and over, internally and externally, whispering them under her harried breath, and running them through her head, attempting to cut through the thrumming and pounding that had persisted inside. She ran them on a loop, over and over, neverending, until they stuck to her teeth and glued to her lips and became the only thing she saw whenever she squeezed her eyes shut to wipe away another batch of tears.

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was dead.

She had to remember this, her brain was telling her, this was the life that she had been forced into now, that this was the reality of her situation. She had to accept it, because there was no other alternative. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There was one other thing she could do. Accept it, or die. Those were her options. Neither was appealing. But one of them kept her breathing.

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was dead.

Lucille was Eric was Stokes was everyone on the announcements was dead.

God, she missed her. She missed her so so much. She missed her with the longing you only got when you didn’t realise how badly you wanted to see someone until they were actually gone, a longing that kept you up at night, hoping that the other person felt the same way towards you. She had never figured out where they had stood, what the future might hold for them both, and she had always been too nervous to pry further, scared that her reputation as the one-night stand girl had put her off, but she wanted it, she wanted it so badly, this feeling that she’d never experienced before but could only be one thing in how unidentifiable it was told her so.

But now she would never get that closure because Lucille was dead, and now she had to use that unstoppable force to sweep aside the immovable object of her yearning that had existed right up until twenty minutes ago, and they clashed in her head, swirling together, neither side yielding or dislodging the other.

And there was that constant gnawing at the back of her mind, the name she hadn’t heard broadcast to the entire flotilla yet. Virginia. What had happened to her? Was she still alive? Her name hadn’t come up on any of the announcements that Bethan had heard, either as the killer or the killed, but that was the rub, the fact that she hadn’t heard all of the announcements, that she’d kept herself waist-deep in denial right from the very beginning, one way or another, that she’d convinced herself that there was nothing to worry about, that Virginia was fine, that this girl she had such a close relationship with, such an intimate one on so many occasions, was still alive somewhere, whether on the flotilla or on the mythical made-up Production Boat where everyone was biding their time until the game finished, and she wouldn’t know the truth because she had buried her head in the sand and covered her ears and now she was mourning everyone at once, and she had to mourn her friend and her something more even though she might not even be dead yet because she didn’t even know for sure, and she had spent all the time she should have been slowly mourning and adapting to her new, short life, and hardening herself and preparing herself, she had spent all that time running around and pretending to be a pirate on a goddamn adventure and

Bethan covered her mouth again, her hand clenching it shut, preventing the scream or the sob or the bile that had been swarming her throat from escaping. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t handle this, there was too much, too much that she had to accept and that she had to take in all at once, and she had thought that being alone would have helped, that separating herself from the farce of The Buccaneers would have allowed her to come to terms with everything on her own terms, but now she was just facing a tidal wave by herself, and her feet were rooted to the spot, up to her ankles in damp sand, unable to run, because Lucille was dead and Eric was dead and Kaya was dead and she was dead.

She felt the sand disappear. She felt herself moving again, past the door of the Captain’s Quarters, moving faster, moving forwards, aimless and just moving for movement’s sake, as the words she had repeated to reassure herself now circled her head like buzzards, waiting for the inevitable.

((Bethan Gayle continued in Don't Fight It))