Strange Bedfellows

[Pippi]

Victoria’s gaze, of course, was fixed on Charlie’s face, smile firmly placed on her own, a smile she’d practiced countless times in the mirror, the one she used whenever she wanted something. She was very used to getting her own way, and she deserved it too, of course. It really did baffle her when people tried to rebel against the government; patriots got rewards, after all. Traitors got nothing.

“It’s a very simple proposal, really,” Victoria whispered. “Mashall seems to think you’ve got her back, she trusts you. So you take her by surprise and hold her down, and let me eliminate her, show the General I’ve got what it takes to win this thing. Then we stick together, watch each other’s backs. If we run into any other patriots, we help them. Maybe we can allow them to tag along with us. And if we encounter anybody trying to rebel against the General… well, you’ve already proven you know how to deal with troublemakers.”

Just as she’d thought earlier; there was no point in getting her hands dirty unnecessary. Allying with another patriot would surely get the General’s attention. One kill was what would prove that she could easily pass this test with flying colours.

“So what do you say?”

Victoria already knew what Charlie’s answer would be. There really was only one correct answer. She reached up with her right hand to pull the spetum out from its makeshift holster.

[MurderWeasel]

Mina could've left. Maybe she should've left, as the other girls stepped away, quietly conversing, the words that she was not meant to hear. It would've made sense, all the sense in the world. This was an opportunity to duck out unmolested, because while Mina didn't think Charlie would turn on her, that was largely gut hunch. She was risking her life by staying, not the sort of casually reckless but potentially valid risk that was staying with Charlie in general, but the sort where she was willingly hanging around to see how negotiations shook out with someone whose primary want seemed to be Mina's demise. There was no way that ended cleanly.

More than that, what was there to gain by sticking around? Little for Mina. Victoria's crass talk of tactics, for all that it was inaccurate, started Mina's mind working on those old pathways again, and she had to admit she didn't have too much she could get from staying with Charlie. The girl was battered, weakened, and a serious liability when it came to fostering alliances with those less likely than her to suddenly keel over. She'd killed twice, and the sorts of people who she was in good with were those like Victoria, those who wouldn't spare Mina a thought but could probably find a bullet with her name on it. The people Mina would be able to approach, those like Marion and Kassandra and KeKe, were a whole lot less likely to trust her with Charlie in tow.

And what did Charlie get from continuing their... whatever this was? Not a lot there, either. Mina had rendered what services she could. She'd kept Charlie alive. But now, Mina wasn't likely to be much help in a fight, certainly not when she was doing her best at all turns to avoid them. She'd ruin Charlie's chances with people like Victoria, ruin better prospects like she was ruining them even now, and maybe if Charlie teamed up with one of those other patriots, not the idiot she was talking with now but some other idiot like Whitman—and, whoops, that was someone else who was now aimed at Charlie due to Mina's casual trash talk, come to think of it—she might be able to live longer.

But that was really academic. Mina wasn't the sort who could ever win this, and, as much as the thought made her throat feel even drier, neither was Charlie now. It was less than two days in. There were so many others who weren't fighting blood loss, who weren't so quick to land in inadvisable fights, who had guns and food and the sorts of stomachs that would let them accept Mina's aid and still stick a knife in her neck the moment she bared it.

So maybe that was why Mina didn't leave. They were both dead anyways, so what did it matter? She looked around, considered the building, the doors to the left, the stairs, the windows, but her feet were fixed.

Was that really it? Was she held just by nihilism?

No. There were so many reasons she didn't want to turn away that it was hard to fully parse them. The strongest, well, it wasn't her fatalistic certainty of their doom. Might've been trust. Might've been idiocy of her own, to match Victoria's.

[Namira]

Charlie kept her expression neutral. Discipline. Don't allow your face to speak for you.

Work together, cooperate through the game, then leave a blank at the end.

'Show the General I have what it takes', that's how Victoria phrased it.

She wasn't as smart or as subtle as she thought she was. She was also continuing to view this in terms of patriots versus non-patriots, as if those considerations even mattered anymore. They weren’t soldiers. What made any of them deserve to live or die any more than anyone else? It certainly wasn’t dependent on how well they sang the star-spangled banner, whether or not they came from a good family with good connections.

Charlie knew what she had to do. Had known since she asked Victoria over here. The patriot, the one offering the world, the one who was like her, or that one back there, the rebel, the frustrating, galling girl who had landed Charlie in trouble and humiliated her?

And saved her life.

Charlie nodded a couple of times along with Victoria. Then, as she reached for her weapon to start off the plan to kill Mina, Charlie moved.

Right forearm around Victoria’s head, pulling it back, knife backhanded in her left hand.

Charlie thrust the blade behind Victoria’s jawbone and then ripped it across with all her might.

[Pippi]

Charlie was nodding along with Victoria’s proposal. That was good, that was good. Thoroughly expected, but good nonetheless. It served well to be obedient, after all. A little obedience here and there in the now would lead to you giving the orders instead, in the future. If only Mashall had ever learned that, she wouldn’t be moments away from bleeding out in the cold and dusty doorway of some scruffy fisherman’s home.

Of course, an alliance could only last for so long. The General was a generous man, so if two patriots made it to the very end, he would surely be willing to let them both live. But nobody truly knew what happened to the victors of the program, did they? Victoria had an inkling; some highly important project, one that required the utmost secrecy, and for everyone involved in it to be hidden away from the public eyes. Maybe, for whatever reason, it could only be completed with one victor from each program. She had no way of knowing the truth, but whatever it may have been, she trusted the General’s decisions.

It would be a real shame to let another patriot die in front of her, but Victoria would do what she had to in order to prove she was the greatest American that National Summit had to offer.

The last thought that crossed Victoria’s mind was of her standing in front of the General, shaking his hand, a medal being placed on her, and she smiled serenely.

Then Charlie grabbed hold of her head, and Victoria let out a strangled choking noise, struggling to breathe through the sudden movement, mind fuzzy and spinning, like a television set that had been dropped on its side.

The struggle became impossible as soon as Charlie’s blade pierced Victoria’s throat, ripping it apart, blood seeping from the gash and spilling down her neck and chest.

Victoria fell to her knees, arms falling limply by her sides. She was dead before she keeled over forwards, facedown in the dirt.

F29 – VICTORIA BELLAMY: DECEASED

[MurderWeasel]

Mina waited. A soft breeze from the sea carried past her and into the house through the now-open portal, stirring the dust around her feet and prickling the bare skin on her thighs between the tops of her socks and the bottom of her skirt. She didn't retrieve the hook from its home, though she did check it, running her right thumb over the rough metal. It was cool and firm and deadly as ever.

Trust was strange. Mina was pretty sure she didn't care for it.

She wasn't watching where Charlie and Victoria had gone. In fact, she was studiously keeping her attention elsewhere, allowing the pair the privacy they'd sought. Her senses wandered, apart from her hearing. She was listening for one very particular thing, something that would have her moving in a heartbeat. She didn't expect to hear it, though.

Was that a whisper of a gurgle in the distance? Mina shivered, the breeze doing its work.

It hadn't been long, but ever so briefly Mina again thought about how foolish she was being. Something inside of her was tense, clawing at the insides of her chest, trying to get out and run away and hide somewhere safe, but she could keep it locked up for a little longer at least. What did it matter? They were all dead anyways.

When Charlie came back, she was unaccompanied, except for a few new bloodstains. Mina nodded at her, mouth set in a line.

"We should get some rest," she said. "There have to be beds around here somewhere. I can take first watch if you want."

She didn't feel for Victoria, not even a little.

[Namira]

The sheer violence of the blood spray caught Charlie off guard.

She wasn’t sure why. How many arteries in the neck? She’d just cut several.

Another strangely detached thought was that Charlie was very glad she’d stepped back behind Victoria before laying open her neck. Getting caught in a spray like that would not do wonders for her already blood-splattered clothes. Unsanitary too.

Because that was what she should be thinking about when splitting someone’s throat from ear to ear. Cleanliness.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

Charlie wiped off the knife on her sleeve, because what better way of removing some blood than on a bloodstain, and returned back to Mina.

Was Mina just not going to mention what Charlie had just done?

“She’s dead. Should probably see what she had on her.”

“Rest sounds good.”

She hoped that Mina, at least, would not comment on the tremor in her voice.

[MurderWeasel]

"Yeah," Mina said. "Okay. I'll take care of that."

She trotted over to where Charlie had been, to the body that was surely still warm. The blood was still pooling, spreading over the concrete, a deep arterial red against the grey. Mina made sure not to step in it. This was nothing. The pool, that had been aftermath. That had been horror. That had been an abdomen split open, intestines pulled free, offal for the flies. Rot already set in, a former classmate turned stinking object. Victoria could've been asleep, except for the ragged gaping gash that was torn from her throat and the fact that her eyes weren't closed, like, at all. Mina hadn't watched exactly what Charlie had done. She should've, maybe. She still hadn't seen anyone die.

That was okay. Mina stopped and tugged the bag free from the dead girl. Was Victoria even actually dead? She wasn't moving, but she was still bleeding. It had been, what, less than two minutes? How long did dying take? Mina prodded the body with the toe of her boot, just in case the girl would rise back up like a monster in a movie, but that didn't happen, so Mina collected the weapon from her too.

She didn't want it. Maybe Charlie would. Mina thought to do something cool, something cold, and sucked her cheeks in as she collected a big wad of spit, but when she turned to launch it at Victoria's face she found herself staring at the girl's pale, bloodied cheeks and couldn't, she just couldn't, so she swallowed instead and choked on her own saliva.

Coughing, Mina made her way back to the door, resolving not to think about it further. Victoria was dead. Good. Let her stay that way. Out of sight, out of mind. And besides, Mina had supplies again. That was something. She was pretty thirsty, and now she could drink. She'd been feeling hungry too, but the protests of her stomach were of a different sort now.

"Let's try the doors on the left," she said, returning to the chat like she'd just popped to the restroom. She made sure to meet Charlie's gaze, to keep her voice normal. Nothing had changed, or no, it had, but not for the worse. "First floor's better if we have to jump out the window because more assholes show up."

[Namira]

Charlie leaned against the side of the building, turning her knife over between her hands.

Funny how much you could do with a knife. They talked about that in the cadets. Any weapon was better than no weapon at all, and for any talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight, there was also such a thing as bringing fists to a knifefight.

But the former wasn't as accurate as the saying necessarily made it out to be. A trained marksman would obviously take out a melee opponent long before there was any threat, but none of them were trained here, not properly, and this was urban combat. Shooting somebody wasn't straightforward, and once you closed to melee, a knife was much, much better than a gun.

That was three, now. All with this knife. Effective, she was getting very used to it. Hadn't even really needed to think about where to aim.

Of course, most places were lethal with a blade like that.

Good job Charlie. Top efficiency. Top marks for being a murderous motherfucker.

Mina returned.

"All right."

[MurderWeasel]

All right. So in they went, Mina in the lead. She half expected to be surprised by some new terror, some classmate who'd hopped in through the window and thus hadn't left footprints but who was lurking behind a door with a machete and a thirst for blood. But nothing of the sort complicated their progress.

Mina's steps were quiet as possible given her boots, slow, sneaky like she was a child again, each motion careful. She tested her weight, listened for the creak of floorboards, minimized noise where she could.

The first door was a restroom, small and messy, mirror speckled with grime, toilet lid open and all the water gone from inside, shower without a curtain. Mina noted it, scanned for ambush (none evident), and moved on.

The next was a bedroom. There was a window, but it was closed, a desk with a chair in front of it, a twin-sized bed covered in dusty, pale pink sheets. That stirred a memory in Mina, something long ago, something she didn't want to be dealing with now and so she locked it away and she plodded her way over to the desk, abandoning any stealth now so that the noise could clomp clomp those thoughts out of her head. She dropped into the chair and dug through her new bag, digging out a bottle of water.

"Well," she said, nodding to Charlie, "home sweet home. Make yourself comfortable."

She set the hook on the desk, again not so quietly, twisted the cap off the water bottle took three greedy gulps but it had been too long and her guts seized, a stabbing pain she managed to keep from coming to her face as more than a quick wince. She'd meant to lead cleanly into her next statement, but instead forced it out a few seconds later.

"I'll make sure the neighbors don't give us any trouble."

Finally, Mina let her body relax, slowly sipping now from the bottle.

[Namira]

Fuck it. Sooner or later, she needed to at least try to rest properly.

What had she said to Mina earlier about other survival conditions? Sleeping counted as one.

Charlie tried not to think too hard about Victoria's logic earlier. The inference of there only being one winner in that partnership, which would be Victoria.

What about this partnership? When would Mina have that realisation?

But Charlie was on borrowed time anyway. Maybe she'd be all right with that. Maybe.

She had to admit, as much as she felt sick to think about the situation they'd been forced into, that perhaps a very good 'screw you' to the regime that had put them here would be to have a person like Mina win. Charlie could appreciate irony.

"All right."

Charlie moved over to the bed and gingerly lay down. Her stomach hurt less.

She wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

She slept.

[MurderWeasel]

For a time, Mina kept watch. She was tired too, but she was used to being tired. She sat and she watched Charlie in the bed, watched the girl's chest rise and fall, and she was torn by conflicting desires that she couldn't even begin to comprehend, let alone parse.

Part of Mina wanted to go and sit on the bed next to Charlie, to rest her hand on the girl's shoulder or run her fingers through the girl's hair like her father had done when she was little and couldn't sleep. It might wake Charlie, but would she mind? Any comfort here was something, and what other opportunities would they have? They could cry, maybe, or just sit and draw comfort from a moment of peace.

Part of Mina wanted to go to the bed and slip out of her dirty, sweaty, bloodstained clothes and slip under the covers and nestle up to Charlie, pull the girl close and, and see what happened then, see if anything happened when she pressed her lips to the girl's. She would cling to Charlie like she'd clung to a girl in a bed with sheets the same shade of pale pink long ago, and too soon they'd die their little deaths together but maybe they might find something worthwhile beforehand, something besides pain and blood and fear. She'd have to be careful, so very careful, when she brushed her hands over Charlie's sides, to not dislodge the bandages.

Part of Mina wanted to fortify their position. She'd bar the window, blockade the doors. There were no collars, so they wouldn't have to move until the bitter end. Maybe they had a chance. She'd done her calculations and had realized how worthless the two of them were, individually and to each other, but maybe that could change. Maybe she could start taking things seriously. If she had a real goal, something she'd give her life for, maybe she could do it, could push Charlie through to the end, see something of worth come of her existence. And when had keeping Charlie alive become something so important? When had it started to feel almost more vital than ensuring her own survival?

But Mina knew the answer to that, knew it so brutally, painfully well.

The part of Mina that won made perfect sense. It had all the answers. This was the part that had rattled the cage inside, seeking its freedom, and as soon as the other pieces of her had their say, it quietly stood and then burst free, shattering its bonds and rending the bars of its cage.

Mina stood, very quietly. She was sneaky still. This had been inevitable from the start. She was stupid to think otherwise. She was stupid to think anything could be different. She was stupid to think she could change.

She left Victoria's weapon, but took the bag. Standing at the doorway, looking back, the parts of Mina that had been thwarted cried out for her to do something, to find a compromise, to lay a quick hand on Charlie's shoulder or a kiss on her cheek or a whisper of apology or anything, anything to wake her and stop this from happening, but in an instant they were stifled. That they'd had even that resurgence told Mina she'd stayed far too long.

How had they come to travel together? How had she let herself make that mistake?

Mina tiptoed down the hallway, feet finding the quietest, firmest spots on the floorboards, unconsciously cataloged earlier for just this purpose. She closed the front door silently behind her and looked at the house for only a few seconds longer than she had to. She wished, for a moment, that another bullet would come from the blue, blow through her skull and shatter her being into nothingness, but no bullet came. The snipers, if snipers there still were, held their fire, and Mina hurried away, leaving Charlie asleep and alone and defenseless, hidden but barely.

As Mina passed Victoria's corpse, the pool of blood haloing it now mostly dried, all she could do was hope that when she and Charlie met their respective demises the process would be fairly quick and relatively free of pain.

((Mina Mashall continued in No Longer A Dreamer))

[Namira]

When Charlie woke up, she told herself that she wasn't surprised, shouldn't be disappointed.

Really, she should be feeling grateful that Mina hadn't seen fit to kill her in her sleep. That was what a pragmatist would have done, and whether consciously or not, Mina had chosen not to do so.

Of course, when it came to Mina, pragmatic was one of the furthest descriptions from the mind. Even from their history together, the pragmatic thing to do would have been to leave her to die.

Maybe she just felt a sense of how ridiculous it would be to desperately strive to save Charlie's life and then murder her a day later.

Charlie couldn't claim that she wouldn't have seen the irony in that.

Charlie woke up to the empty room and spent an indeterminate length of time staring at the wall.

She told herself that she wasn't bothered.

Then she told herself she shouldn't be bothered. This was just Mina making the smart play. This was Mina thinking ahead for once in her life.

And really, she didn't owe Charlie anything, did she?

"Fuck you," said Charlie to Mina and the empty room, and told herself that the thickness in her own voice wasn't tears.

((Charlie Cade continued in No Longer a Dreamer))