It Has A Lasting Impact

[Brackie]

((Ashanti Baker continued from Loyalty: 1))

If Ashanti hadn't grabbed the edge of the doorframe as she fell backwards trying to get that damn jetpack downstairs, she probably would have cracked her head open on the curtail. Instead, she awkwardly clung to the frame by her fingertips, desperately searching with her ankles for a stable footing.

As she did so, she heard an almighty bang beneath her back as the jetpack did not stop as she did and instead began to fall down the stairs.

Every metallic thud was a blessing that she could still hear, because she didn't exactly know how that thing was made, or what it was made of, or how it was designed to get people off the ground. Well, people who weren't her, unless she decided to lop off limbs. So when she finally stopped hearing the crashes, she flexed the muscles in her arm to check she could still feel, and was still awake. She was.

A few moments later, she found her footing. She pulled herself upright and rotated. She couldn't see beyond her nose, as the moon was on the wrong side of the boat. She couldn't check the damage without going down herself and inspecting it, because of course she couldn't. Ashanti plunged her hand into her pack, and returned with a flashlight, ready to illuminate the way.

As every step echoed downwards, she thought about what would have happened if the jetpack had exploded at some point down the hatch. The boat probably would have had a hole ripped into it, and began to sink, but what would happen to Ashanti? Would she have been killed? Would she have escaped damage, apart from maybe some heat? Would she have been left incapacitated, damaged on the ground until the ocean swallowed her whole, a new addition to the highlight reels? Would she have been close enough to the explosion that she wouldn't have needed to worry about anything ever again, including the fact she was still having to worry about an entire grocery list of things that an upper-class educated eighteen-year-old girl shouldn't have to worry about?

Impossible to tell, but at least she knew where it was. Right at the landing of the stairs, sitting by the edge of her feet.

It probably wasn't the best idea to move it again. It was downstairs, if she wanted to move it again she was doing it the proper way. The flashlight moved inwards.

The quarters of this boat weren't exactly a hotel, but there was enough. Beds, cabinets, empty spaces where luxuries probably once stood, it had everything someone who spent nights on the ocean would need. It wasn't a life Ashanti could have imagined, yet here she was, following in the footsteps of people who probably had missing teeth and fucked each other in the ass for comfort. Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course - Ashanti had lots of gay friends back at school, whose names she didn't exactly remember right now but they were people who existed and who Ashanti loved and respected, just as long as they were in the right class - hers.

But at least those gay crab catchers had company - Ashanti had nobody now, because she'd pushed Matias too far without realizing what she'd done.

Matias killed Leslie, after she’d told him not too. Why had Ashanti told Matias not to kill him? Good question. She’d know why once she figured it out. She’d just said it, and then she committed to it, because she was doing that now - not thinking, saying things, having to commit to them despite the fact it wasn’t what she wanted. It was stupid, but she had no choice. Matias wasn’t going to let her think. She had to be a certain kind of person for Matias, because she needed him to make sure her reclamation worked all the way through.

He was upset after having killed the farm kid and she'd told him his friends lives didn't matter. At some point, she'd patched this with telling him that her friends lives didn't matter either, but it probably didn't make a difference. She'd said a shitty thing, she realized that now, but what concerned her was that she even thought it could have been the right thing in the first place. She wasn't like that back in real life. When Ashanti went for the jugular like that, or said something that she knew would hurt someone, she did it with conviction, with passion, with the knowledge she was about to ruin someone's emotional state to a point they'd never recover until she was no longer near them. Ashanti could tell herself things were different now, but people were people. SOTF revealed people's true natures, but even if people's true natures were of violent sociopaths, they were still people underneath that, and people still operated on logic and emotion in various quantities. Had she not remembered that, or been telling herself differently?

It's not like it mattered, though, since she'd not get a second chance. Matias was gone.

Ashanti hadn’t signed words in a while now, and it felt just as lonely as not being able to speak. She was able to sign, of course, but what was the point? She didn’t have anything to say. But Matias had that outlet, that common language. It had been taken away, and she had nothing anymore and she felt like shit and she just wanted to disappear into the loud universe and not have to worry anymore, and every single moment of that was happening on top of the fact that she was on SOTF and still hadn’t thought about it properly.

She sat down on the nearest bed, and even though the padding eventually hit hardwood, it was still the only comfort she'd received all day. The distributed weight began to push down on her eyelids, and within minutes Ashanti had leant backwards and fallen to sleep.

*

As the sun burned holes in her closed eyes, she thought about how it could have been her name in place of Matias on those announcements.

Ashanti Baker releasing Leslie Lowell, that was his name, from this mortal coil with one quick shot to the head would have been one way to present herself to the world, because it's not like she had many options. You didn’t get on the announcements for good behaviour, or being Miss Congeniality, or making up a new song. It was the only avenue, the only option for Ashanti to become truly noticed by the people who couldn’t see her on this floating collection of boats.

But she’d come to the realization that it wasn’t what she wanted.

She didn’t know what she wanted, but it wasn’t that.

And she hadn’t told Matias that - in fact, she’d told him the opposite. She was ready and raring to kill, that’s what she’d told him on the first day. They would team up, find other people on their team, get to the end, maybe even grab ten kills along the way for one of them. But she hadn’t had time to settle down, to think, to talk with people. Not just because she couldn’t speak, in fact the fact she wasn’t going to speak was one of the one things she did know, but because she couldn’t have that discussion with Matias. If someone wants to kill, you don’t get to say the opposite, or bargain, or compromise, because there’s a sum involved in this game and the answer is zero.

If Matias ever came back, she was going to have to tell him that. She’d need some time to think things over, to talk about what she wanted.

But that question still remained if she was ever going to see him again.

Was this how their story ended? Parting on hatred? Twains never meeting? Would it have been preferable in the end for that jetpack to explode, rip a hole in the hull of the boat, and take her down into the depths where she wouldn’t have to worry about things like producers and image and rights ever again?

Again, she didn’t know, because she had nobody to talk about this with.

Ashanti opened her burning eyes to the inside of the boat that could have been at the bottom of the ocean by now. It wasn’t exactly how she remembered by flashlight, but she wasn’t plussed about it. At least she had a bed, and sunlight creeping in through cracks.

She pulled herself vertical and sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing the small of her back. It was still sore, probably from a combination of carrying around that stupid, cumbersome jetpack she was never going to be able to use, napping on a jetty, and the mattress being too thin. If she were any other person she would have considered herself lucky to have even had a bed. But she wasn’t.

As her legs dangled several inches from the ground, she thought about what she really wanted.

Ashanti didn’t want to kill anyway, that much was sure. She couldn’t even bear to see Leslie killed last night, she was never going to be able to end a life herself. If she wanted to get that point, she would have to put herself in that mindset, make the active decision to lose her morality at the expense of her personal comfort. But she didn’t. She wasn’t going to kill anyone.

Was she going to be able to watch people get killed, though?

Watching Leslie die was horrific, but to the action she was already numb. Listening to the announcements was one thing, but seeing a death really made it hit home. Leslie’s body was still going to be upstairs, but the memory didn’t make her quiver or nauseate her - it was horrifying to witness, of course, but in the movie theatre of her mind, it had become just another SOTF death she’d seen. Louisa Lynn had done exactly what Matias had done, and right now Leslie was no different to Angel.

So that said something to Ashanti - it said she wasn’t remembering back in horror. It meant she could live with herself if she saw death, it was the actions in the moment that were going to cause her problems. But what was it going to take for Ashanti to get to the point where she could feel comfortable seeing death with no screen between the eyes and the action, in that moment?

There wasn’t an answer to that yet.

She knew she was going to win, but the path there was going to need some storyboarding.

And once again, everything came back to the fact this path was trailing along the road of no words.

Unlike everything she’d agonized over, Ashanti was sure in her decision that no words would escape her lips while she was on this season. Not a single one. Not a scream, a cry, a catchphrase, a rant to the camera, or a single word to her mentor, who was probably bored of her by now. It was funny, really - she’d thought it over after leaving the bowels, and she would have been speaking her heart out if she’d been given the choice to be here. Back in her home life, she’d thought up catchphrases, some variations on Black Girl Magic and Believing Women and other hokey appropriations. She’d have jumped at the opportunity to be here, to partake in television history.

But she wasn’t given that choice - as far as Ashanti was concerned, using her voice was theft. Larceny. It was all she had left, and it was staying in her grip.

Of course, phantom intrusive thoughts wafted through her mind every now and again, especially now that she’d had some sleep. The first and foremost thought was that, hey, what if Ashanti talked in her sleep? Was that clip now out there, representing her? Had she failed, without even knowing? Was she the one walking around with a Prada bag that she had no idea was lifted from Taobao?

These thoughts stayed just as much in her grip as the concept of her voice, and with them came other thoughts.

Like hey, if she had spoken? It was one less thing to have to actively worry about.

And it would mean she could speak again, with nothing to lose. She could rant, she could swear at the cameras, she could ask her mentor for tips and workshop catchphrases with him, and even send some messages home.

Of course, when that thought crossed her mind, her hands had literal grip on the edge of the bed, because one truly important aspect which she’d forgotten was that her family were watching and were more than likely not going to hear her voice again. She couldn’t say anything to them. She could sign at the camera for Shakira, but mom? Dad? Aailyah? The thousands of Louisa Lynn fans who made her home on their feeds? They didn’t get anything. It was selfish of her, because this was all that was left, and she was depriving them of it because she wanted agency in a situation where it didn’t exist, not really.

Those moments hung like dying stars as Ashanti stared at the ground. Eventually, she looked up, towards the nearest camera.

She moved her hands again.

”You’re the strongest person I know, Shakira.”

Tension crackled through her jaw as the urge to scream overcame Ashanti Baker and yet all she could do was clasp her hand to her mouth and close her throat. It was stupid - all it took was that one message, sent through a camera to a single person who could understand it, and she lost her resolve. She wanted to cry, loudly and snottily, like she was ten years old again. She wanted to scream for her parents, her sisters, her friends who weren’t here.

And it was so fucking tempting.

It would make things easier to forget her principles. To forget she had a goal, to carry on with the Prada bag.

But in the end, she held on.

She kept taking breaths, making sure words didn’t flit between them. Eventually, Ashanti had enough of her core return that she felt comfortable removing her hand from her mouth, and began to run the back of it across her forehead. She was sweating. It was getting humid in this nautical basement, and she was somehow going to have to get that jetpack out.

Ashanti kept feeling around her body to make sure she was still there, and she became aware of not just herself, but her self. She was a product to the people watching her, but there were ways through that, even outside of what she’d already accomplished with silence.

Not as effective ways, but ways nonetheless.

Her fingers captured an errant braid that had swung to the side of her head.

*

The process had taken hours, repetitive motions that wade in and out of cramps, but it was complete. Ashanti walked over to the makeshift bathroom and leant towards the mirror.

It was done.

Her braids were no more.

It wasn’t the savage act of rebellion Ashanti wanted it to be, but it was something. There were promotional images of her that were now completely outdated. Of course, did that hurt them more than actually undoing the braids? Because there wasn’t a pile of outdated photos sitting in a room with the producers like there was a pile of shed hair sitting on what Ashanti once treated as a bed.

It was definitely something. She ran her fingers through the result, since the next closest thing she had to a comb was something she needed to eat with. Forks were a commodity, even if there were still some extras from Leslie’s bag laying around.

Ashanti looked at the old but new girl staring back at her in the mirror, and smiled.

*

Back in the real world, the meal she had at that time would have been considered “brunch”.

Most people’s brunches didn’t usually consist of half a tuna sub and an entire roll of Lifesavers, but circumstances were unique.

Just as she began to open the water bottle to wash away the disgusting taste of fish, she heard footsteps from above. Her bones locked into place, and Ashanti stopped moving. There was a very good chance her luck had run out, because Ashanti had no real usable weapon and other people could probably bang things up if they wanted to, whoever and wherever they were.

They didn’t head towards the quarters, though - they seemed to hover over a particular spot, where Ashanti noticed a large brown patch had formed on the ceiling.

Oh. Right.

Still a bit weird she could think of Leslie like that, but no time to dwell. Danger. She remained still, prayers rocketing through her head at the speed of imaginary written word across the imaginary eyeballs.

Eventually, she heard a voice. Didn’t recognize her. Team kill. Another voice. Nothing else.

But the next voice was Matias. He’d come back, for whatever reason. It probably wasn’t for her, since there was no guarantee she was going to be there, but he was upstairs, and through the process of logical deduction someone up there was on their team.

Those two new factoids may have unshackled Ashanti’s joints, but they didn’t make her any calmer. Not only was she not going to be able to communicate directly with her team, but she didn’t know what was going on with Matias. It had been nearly 12 hours, she didn’t know what he still thought of her. She could still be dead to him for all she knew, and trapped in this gutter of a bedroom she didn’t know much.

Two things were going to need to happen - Ashanti needed to reveal herself, and Ashanti needed to talk with Matias, to tell him what she really felt about the situation. Neither of those things felt easy, and in fact the very thought of walking back up those stairs re-nauseated her.

At least, until she heard her name.

He was looking for her.

She felt the worry fall to the wayside like the hair that remained on the bed, as she walked forward, first foot on the curtail.

((Ashanti Baker continued in Loyalty: 2))