The Martyr Approach 2

#1

Verity Stewart had never really cared for the ocean.

((continued from Upset))

And falling into it the second time had reminded her of exactly why.

Her choice was partially respect, but it was also partially just the smartest thing to do. You didn’t challenge an opponent who you had absolutely no hope of beating. You didn’t get your shit kicked in then come back expecting the result to be any different. You were meant to keep out of its way. Prevent the same thing from happening again. Not fuck up and think that that was the past and right now you could somehow take it. She remembered when she was eight, trying to paddle out on the beach before a big wave threw her off, throttled her all the way back to the shore, left her coughing up on the sand, not even able to lift herself off the ground because she was waterlogged and disoriented and struck down right to her bones.

She was feeling a little bit like that right now.

But Verity didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. Right now — right as it had been these past… 30 minutes? this past hour — it was move or die. Her arms were carrying against the rung of a ladder off the side edge of the cruise ship. Her feet were below, trying to keep themselves from slipping on the rungs below them. There was a gash circling all the way across her right tricep, there were bruises where she’d been kicked into and against the railing. Her right hand had pins and needles and aches and creaks and her left eye was just fucking gone but none of that bothered her at all. She was still running on adrenaline. In the heat of the moment. When she got back up on the cruise ship, when she made herself safe again, she could cool off, but until then…

Until then…

She climbed.

She climbed.

She climbed, and she climbed, and she climbed.

And eventually, she made it up to the top. The ladder ended by some of the outdoor corridors, and Verity tipped herself forward onto the floor. Rolled. Stayed there, for a second. Took a breath.

She’d done it.

She’d defeated Akeno.

She’d made herself safe again. Nothing was going to hurt her here.

She took a breath. Felt the adrenaline leave.

She took a breath. Felt the aches in her bones. The tiredness in her body, finally satiated.

She took a breath.

Felt all the pain come back

It was like a gash opened up across her tricep. It was like her hand had been stomped on several times. It was like she’d been kicked in her stomach into a railing and it was like a harpoon had been sent through her eye. It was like she’d fallen from the cruise ship directly into the ocean, like her entire body had just plowed into glass, like salt water had been poured into every open wound on her body. Until now, she’d been able to push it aside, focus on the here and now, pretend like it was happening to somebody else, but now it was here. It was now. It was Verity.

And she screamed.

It was fire. It was pain. It was everything. And she screamed.

“Help-”

And she screamed.

“Help-”

But who would? Fisk and Mandy would still be in the banquet hall. Anybody else would just finish her off. And-

“Shiva!”

And Shiva-

“Shiva, help-”

Shiva wouldn’t be here. Not after what Verity had said. Not after what they’d all done. She was alone. Nobody would be here to help her.

Guess that meant she had to help herself. She had no bag, had no medical supplies, but surely there had to be something around, some body left by itself, some bag not properly looted. She had to check. She turned her head to its side. Tried her best to look around. It was a corridor and there were doors on one side and a railing on the other and-

and-

and-

and she’d been here before.

It’d been before this game had even started. She’d run, she’d closed her mind, she was finding a place to sit and try not to think about what she’d just done to Timothy and she’d gone down a corridor just like this, gone through a door just like the one to her right and she’d sat there and cried and realized just how much she’d fucked things up then came up with the mission statement and dumped the shit she didn’t need in Timothy’s bag and-

The adrenaline came back.

Back enough, at least. Everything still burned but enough had been pushed away that she could get on her knees and crawl to the door. She opened the door, went to reach under the bed, and it was still there. Still zipped up. She opened it and looked inside and-

Antiseptic.

Bandages.

Thank god she’d had no room for these the first day. She took them out. Laid herself down on the ground. She didn’t know enough first aid to really know how to use any of these and she didn’t really know the basics of first aid at all but, like, it was just putting the antiseptic in and then bandaging it up, right? That was what she got from watching/writing about SotF and while she knew there was a hole in there of important shit she didn’t know she wanted to believe that it was enough. That what she had would be enough to deal with the worst of it. She grabbed the antiseptic with her right hand. Put it over the black space her left eye had been. Tried to tilt so that only a little bit would go in-

Felt the pins and needles. Felt her hand overcorrect. Pour the entire bottle onto her face.

Felt the fire.

Felt it hurt, beyond even what she’d been experiencing a couple of minutes below. Felt an eruption in her eye spreading through her nerves through the rest of her body felt it dominate her senses overwhelm her until everything was pain nothing here was real Verity screamed and

The day was old.

The sky was cloudy.

And Verity Stewart was walking. Alone. She had her earbuds in, she’d just wiped the sweat from her face, and she was in the process of weaving around some trees as she continued down the dirt path by the creek. It was a daily thing. Semi-daily. Every one time she went for her walk she’d go up this path and back through the park and every other time she’d go up through the park and back through this path. It was for variance. To remove the irritation that came with doing the same thing the same way every single day. Peace of mind, kind of. These walks were a place to think about things. Compartmentalize. Achieve… zen or mindfulness or whatever was supposed to help. That kind of thing.

They also tended to really make her more irritated if she was already irritated. Say, like, she lost a game of Combat she really could’ve won, and she’d done nothing else between then and her walk, then it was hard to think of much else. The Combat match against… whatever that person’s username was would stay in her head as she chose her path into the park, and the fact that she could’ve fucking won that would just repeat over and over and the heat would keep tightening her head and warming her blood until she slammed the door shut when she got home and her mother would ask why she was angry and start yelling at her when she didn’t give an answer.

The only way to stop it was to do this. Get all meta and think about what she generally thought about during her walks. Recurse in on herself and come closer to the realization that everything became a routine in the end and there was nothing unique. Or nothing that’d remain unique for long. Entropy. Big History. The idea that everything was just electricity going through your neurons and nothing mattered.

Really, there was no winning this.

So Verity just kept walking. Escaped the coverage of the canopy and checked her iPod shuffle as it changed songs to something she really should’ve deleted a long time ago. She walked across a patch of grass where someone had set up a table and chairs, looked out to see whether any dogs were gonna run up and be assholes, and made it all the way out of the little back route and in the parking lot to this swimming center. One right turn later, she was right on one end of the creek. A couple seconds, some time walking across the rocks jutting out so that she didn’t have to get her shoes all wet, and she was at the other end. One staircase later, and she was here.

The playground.

More significant as a halfway point than as a playground, but this place had its benefits. Mostly with the net swing. Whenever nobody was around, Verity always took the chance to sit down, lay back, and take a rest looking at the sky until whatever the current song was ended and she went on her way. It was always nice, but… it never tended to happen. Somehow even when it was near dark there’d always be kids here playing and Verity felt really weird sitting down around here when she was 18 and everyone around was like 10 at most so she always just had to walk past and hope she got to sit down another day.

Another day meaning… not today, sadly. Somebody was already in the spot. A girl… actually roughly about Verity’s age, maybe. Her either-blonde-or-brown-Verity-couldn’t-tell coloured hair hung in the air as she looked out into the sky, away from Verity. Oh well. Not like she really wanted to mill around listening to this anyway. She walked past the playground, looked out at the park beyond. Some people playing baseball. Two-

“Hey!”

-people off in the far distance just straight-

“Hey, wait up!”

-up on top of each other and Verity-

“Hey! Vee!”

-felt something plow into her back and make her scream. She spun around. Saw the girl who’d been on the net swing. She was looking, like, right into Verity’s eyes, drilling her gaze right into Verity’s soul. It was fucking intimidating. Verity smiled and waved to all the other regulars at the park because that was what normal humans did apparently but this was on another level. She took out her earphones. Took a breath. Looked away.

“Hi?” Her throat said. It took so much to force even one noise out. “I- don’t know who-”

“You… don’t?” The other girl said, tilting her head. “You don’t remember me?”

Her hair went down almost to her shoulders, but not quite. She was… pretty clearly white, but tanned, like one of those people who spent all their free time being one with nature or some shit. Her eyes… were still so hard to look at, but even then Verity would’ve had to look down a bit to see them — the girl was over half a foot shorter than her. She was dressed… okay, if this was for exercise. So long as she didn’t actually care about that black t-shirt of a band Verity didn’t know, then…

Then Verity knew nothing, regardless. She’d never seen this other person in her life. There was a sense that maybe some of these features were recognizable, but…

She shook her head.

“Really?”

“No. I don’t,” Verity said. Maybe the irritation from the Combat match was still in there, somewhere. Kinda came through her voice.

“I’m your friend. From elementary. Remember?

Verity blinked. Kinda stared, for a few seconds.

“It’s me,” the other girl said. “BB. BB Gunnerson.”

The one nice thing Verity would say about Ritzy Daggers: she’d managed to make the announcements really effective as alarm clocks.

Because even after she’d fainted from how much everything had hurt the screech and crackle of the speakers was enough to jostle her body awake. And even though her dirt nap had left her zonked out of her mind, those little moments when Ritzy was yapping on about shit that filled up air time and deaths that had already happened were good to get your mind in order, get her brain cogent enough to focus on the things she said that actually mattered. She was on her back, her spine was all cricked, and the hole where her eye was still burning, but by the time she realized that Fisk wasn’t here with her, that he and her and Mandy had been in a fucking deathmatch just a couple hours ago, she’d gained enough brainpower to listen. Enough capability to realize she’d wasted it when all the names got rattled off and nobody she gave a shit about had died. All three had made it through today. Fisk had managed to kill Lucia.

Verity had managed to kill Akeno.

She’d been… kind of hoping that maybe Ritzy would provide a little illumination as to why Verity had done what she’d done. Why she’d fought back. Why she’d taken Akeno down into the water with her. Why she’d moved in. Cut her open. She’d been kind of hoping that maybe with some sort of outside perspective she’d maybe be able to put together some of those puzzle pieces, but… no. Ritzy was as useless as usual. All she’d said were the details of the scene and the fact that this had been their final encounter. That this had been the end of the story. That it was obvious: they were meant to kill each other. That was the only point of them having known each other, of having met so many times. That there was only one way Verity and Akeno could’ve ended.

...

Man, she hoped Ritzy got fired after this season. Wouldn’t do Verity any favours, but… literally she’d asked for just one thing and she didn’t even get that. An explanation. An idea. Something she could launch off of so that things made sense.

Because it’d been done on instinct. Akeno had the harpoon gun held right in front of Verity and her free hand — the one Akeno hadn’t stomped on — had come up. Grabbed it, just like that. There hadn’t been a plan, or anything. Not until Akeno had kicked. Not until the railing behind Verity had rattled. It’d been… a plan made up on the fly. Try and get Akeno to keep kicking her. Break the railing. Fall into the ocean. Escape. She’d tried to beg, right before then; plead that Akeno spare her life, plead that there was a way for their mutual story to end with something other than bloodshed, tried to find some way out of the fight she was right about to lose. It’d worked out the same way as when she tried to rewrite her story, all those days ago. Tried to be something other than the killer. Tried to keep her flame burning, her story turning, no matter what the cost.

Either way, her path had been marked by violence.

The only way out had been down.

So down she went. Down, into the black. The last thing she remembered was taking Akeno with her, and then… the cold. The drink. She’d squinted the one eye she had left, found Akeno, and then

just stabbed her

just like that

It didn’t even matter when Akeno kicked her. It hadn’t even mattered that Verity couldn’t check the body. It was clear. She’d cut her right open. What had happened wasn’t the question. Why was. Why did she try and push the harpoon gun upwards, at that last moment? Why did she bring Akeno down into the ocean with her? Why had Verity gone to all of the trouble, pulled the harpoon out of her eye, to go and kill her? Couldn’t they have both walked away from that? Hadn’t Verity just ensured bloodshed was the way their story together had ended?

Timothy Torales. Keegan Garcia. Alyssa Tibbett. Junji Yamada. Akeno Kudo.

Five.

Why was it five? How had it gotten to five? How had it gotten to one, in the first place?

She didn’t know.

She was tired.

She took a breath.

She took a breath.

Didn’t even bother to get onto the bed next to her before silence took over the cruise ship again. Before the exhaustion and pain that hadn’t left wrapped itself around her brain, sent her into the ocean again.

“Wait,” Verity jutted. The knowledge finally came flooding through her head. “That’s you? You’re Barbara?”

“Uh, dude,” Barbara said, “I’m BB. I was always BB.”

“Oh, shit,” Verity sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Sorry. Forgot.”

BB sighed.

“It’s fine. Just come with me.”

She turned around and started walking towards the playground, not looking back at Verity. Verity… mostly just made sure her foot was still in its ball and chain as she was dragged along, making sure to pull her headphones out and pause her iPod. It was a bit of a shame — man, she could never get through this song on a walk without some form of interruption — but it was loosely a necessary sacrifice; trying to listen to music while also trying to listen to someone talking was pretty much impossible and also very very rude. She stuffed the cords in her pocket. Stayed silent as she was pulled along the park, back to where she’d just been.

They stopped, back at the rope swing where Verity had first seen the other girl. BB turned around. Looked at Verity. Plonked her butt right onto the seat, scooched to the left, then patted the now empty half of the swing.

“Join us, Verity,” BB said, staring right on ahead. “Join us.”

“It’s okay to?” Verity asked, pulling her pants up. Wondering how much weight the rope could bear.

“Yeah?” BB replied, with the tone of voice you had when you were wondering why someone was wondering something. She tilted her head. Just kinda looked at Verity for a second. “I said you could.”

“Okay,” Verity said, taking a breath, stepping towards BB. She turned around, waited for the swing to swing towards her before sitting down and-

And wow, this wasn’t comfy. Like, okay, there was enough to be said about how the swing had swung around for a few seconds like it was about to collapse, but, like, even after that Verity’s body was barely on this thing. One of her legs was on its side, her calf grinding against the edge as everything below kind of dangled and stuck out. The back of her head was trying to rest against the same part, and it was like a pillow made of rocks. Like, was she meant to do this? Was she meant to be here? Was this feeling like gravity was about to fucking destroy her normal? Like the two of them were about to hit the ground at any moment?

At least hers and BB’s sides were touching. At least that felt nice. How long had it been since she’d actually hugged someone who’d really been touchy-feely enough to reciprocate?

“So how’ve you been?” BB asked. “It’s been a while.”

“Doing fine,” Verity lied. Saying more felt like too much right now. “You?”

“Yeah, I’m doing okay, I guess.” BB replied. “I moved to this bumfuck town in Arizona I don’t remember the name of five years ago. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to be here.”

Verity giggled.

“So you’re at school there now?”

“Yeah. I’m also in a band, I think?”

“You think?”

“I dunno. You don’t really know for sure, so I don’t really know for sure either.”

Verity… paused. Shook her head. Waited until BB spoke again to try and understand what she was saying.

“So you went to Mangrove?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Verity replied.

“With Keegan?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You still friends?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

A pause.

“What’s the problem?” BB asked.

“We don’t get to talk,” Verity replied. “Or, well, not as much as I’d like. He has his own friends. I can never really hang out with him.”

“Why not?”

“Because I…” Verity paused. Crossed her arms as best she could with the room she had. Huffed out a breath. “Because I don’t think I’d really mesh with his friends. Like, there’s this guy named Fisk who looks like a full-on supervillain and he seems mean and, like, someone who probably does crimes out of school and that’s… And he’s just… like, scary. If he tried to talk to me I think I’d just be, like, a deer in the headlights or something.”

She pushed out another breath.

“But, like, Keegan likes him, and the two are together all the time, so it feels weird to ask him to hang out with me instead. Like I’m… I dunno. Like I’m taking his time or something.”

“That sounds like it sucks,” BB said. “But you at least have other people, right?”

Verity decided, at that moment, to let her silence be the most reliable indicator of how things were going. Didn’t even look at BB.

“Ouch.”

“Like, I had a group,” Verity said. “I used to sit and eat lunch where, like, Laura and Alaska and some of the other gamer girls ate lunch, but even back in ninth grade it was clear that, like, I wasn’t actually one of them. Like, I didn’t play champions, I didn’t smoke weed, I didn’t go to parties or date footballers or titty-stream so, like, it wasn’t really like I could join any of their conversations. I just, like, ate my lunch and then looked at my laptop for the rest of recess. Barely talked at all. At least in class there’d be shit happening, y’know?”

Another puff out of Verity’s mouth.

“I don’t think they’ve even noticed that I’m gone yet. That I just sit by myself now.”

A pause.

“Don’t think they ever really noticed me much in the first place.”

“I mean, like, two way street,” BB said. “Did you even notice that both of them died yesterday?”

Verity shrugged. Felt her right shoulder barge up against the rope.

“I dunno. There’s been a lot happening. None of it good.”

“Nah. Today was pretty decent. You had that chat with Mary at the bus stop. You got a couple of wins off in Combat just before, as well.”

“Yeah, well, then I lost at the very end.”

“It was close, though,” said BB. “And hey, like, that person's ping was, like, super low. They’re local. You might be able to meet them again.”

“I mean, maybe,” sighed Verity. “But it’s probably just going to be Junji or someone else.”

“Would that be a bad thing?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I mean, fair,” BB shrugged. “If it’s Junji or Ivan then yeah, like, fuck them, but even then…”

“But even then what?”

“Even then do you ever think that the problem might be you?”

Verity blinked.

“Like, I dunno,” BB continued. “You’re low on the totem pole, not many people like you, you know that, I know that, but you never actually put that into perspective. Like, you’re weird, you get poor grades, you have no friends, but instead of maybe accepting that or trying to turn the other cheek you just take it out on who you can. Stomp down the people even lower than you. Act like that somehow elevates you when in reality you’re pushing away the people who might actually like you if you tried. Who are also weird enough that, like, y’know, maybe they can actually understand you the way you want to be understood. Have you ever thought about that?”

…

Verity…

Verity… very slowly turned her head, and as she did, she found that the person on the swing with her wasn’t BB anymore.

“Are you getting it yet?” It asked.

“I-” Verity’s throat jutted. “Who-”

“I’m you,” said the shadow, as it turned towards Verity and smiled its crooked smile. “And you’re me. Welcome to your life.”

“Oh-

“Oh shit.

“Uh…

“Hey, Sofia.

“Did… someone move you?

“Are you gone now?

“Did you get to leave?

“It’s… been a while, huh.

“I-

“Hold on. Need to sit. I’m still so wiped. Akeno… got- me, so, like…

“Don’t worry. I’m alive. She’s… gone, now. I killed her. Hope that… makes you happy, wherever you are.

“It’s weird.

“I dunno. I didn’t, like, do it for you, or anything. It wasn’t for revenge. Like… it’s weird. Ultimately... me and Fisk knew you and James were dead when you didn’t come back to the restaurant. Didn’t really matter how it ultimately ended up. We’d… kind of already gone through the grief. Knew we had to like, move forward. Keep on going. Focus on the here and now because this is glitz and glam SotF and god forbid things slow down a little, y’know?

“So, um.

“Yeah.

“Didn’t really matter that Akeno had been the one who killed you. And killing you wasn’t the reason I killed Akeno. I…

“Still don't really know why I did it, honestly.

“Like… she had a reason to kill me. She said it. She wanted to survive. I was a threat towards survival. I was this spectre that kept showing up in her story and if she wanted to potentially make it out I had to be taken down. I was just… there. Just kind of wondering why it came to this. Why we actually had to kill each other.

“Still kinda looking for a reason. I could’ve left her in the water, we could’ve both found ladders to climb, but…

“But now she’s gone. Our story together is over.

“I’m never going to see her again.

“I’m never going to… really know who she was.

“...

“...

“Kinda like with you, honestly.

“Like…

“Don’t… take me fully on this if I was like, totally off the mark, but, like, it always felt like you wanted to talk to me? Have a… I dunno. A heart to heart, or something? Like, get to know each other, get to be something beyond just two people in the same group. Like, it felt like there were moments where you’d approach and then some other stuff happened and the moment we could’ve had a moment ended.

“Sorry about that, by the way. I could’ve… stuck around the main group more. Talked with you and James and Vasily more than I did. Don’t exactly have an excuse. I was just in my feelings about a lot of stuff. Killing Keegan. Getting told by Fisk that I was one of you guys now.

“Maybe part of me thought that you and James would’ve… stuck around longer. That there’d be time for us to have that talk. That, y’know, The Respects were actually invincible and nobody was going to take us down. That we’d all be here forever.

“You’re not the only one I made that mistake with.

“I remember… Leah. Night one. We met way down in the bowels, barely recognized each other at first, but then she was with me when I faced off with Akeno. Stopped her from killing… somebody I couldn’t see. I… can’t remember what we said to each other, but I remember her saying goodnight to me. Like it wasn’t SotF. Like it was the most normal thing in the world. There’s… a thing I remember, about how you say ‘see ya’ when you’re leaving someone because you’re going to meet them again pretty soon, and it was like that. I was going to meet Leah again. Our story together did not end there.

“Same with Matias. I went for a walk while Fisk was supposed to be taking care of Gregory and we met. We… talked. I was finally able to… actually unload some shit and try and figure it out and he was right there. He listened to the whole thing. Understood when I said I didn’t know what I even was. Tried to help, even if there wasn’t really much he could say. It was… such a juxtaposition. Back at Mangrove, I was just… honestly scared of him. He was like a dog and I was worried if I got too close he’d bark and rush at me so whenever he was there I’d just… shut down. Keep my head low. Do my best to walk past. And here… I didn’t even think about who he used to be. He was just a person. We talked. We… got some shit out there. We said see ya to each other. We were going to meet again. Just like with Leah.

“But then I didn’t see either of them again.

“Seo-yun killed them both on the same night. Got a tenth on the same night. Left the game.

“Left me here, not able to resolve anything with either of those two. Didn’t even stay behind so that I could, like, get closure through talking to their killer or something.

“And you know what’s funny?

“Mandy’s one of us now. The person who was right there with her when those people were made gone to me forever, the girl who helped her every step of the way, she’s one of the Respects now. I’m just supposed to help her.

“I guess I’m just supposed to ignore every reason I’d have to shoot her just because she’s my teammate.

“I guess I’m just supposed to forget that The Respects were meant to be against the team thing just because Mandy’s here and Fisk likes her.

“I guess I’m now just a prop for Seo-yun now. The tool Mandy uses so that she can get out of the game and she and Seo-yun can have their perfect victory, or something.

“Didn’t matter who I was.

“Didn’t matter what I thought. Who I’d met. Any reason I’d have to, y’know, not be into anything that’s happening right now.

“...

“I dunno.

“I guess I’m just here now.

“And I guess I’m just supposed to accept that I’m never going to be able to follow those threads. With Leah. With Matias.

“With you.

“...

“...

“Okay I… I think I’m going to need to… rest, again, so I’m… going to have to leave you here. Sorry for cutting this off.

“Can we continue this?

“Can we… maybe actually have that talk you wanted to do?

“Doesn’t… really matter that you’re dead, honestly. Doesn’t really matter that I’m still here. That my story hasn’t ended yet. That I don’t know… where it’s gonna go before then.

“Doesn’t really matter. I’ll see you again.

“We’ll both end up on the other side eventually.”

“So what’s your favourite movie?”

The setting had changed. Verity was on the swing by herself. The sky had changed. The background had stopped mattering. The other voice was somewhere, out of sight. Verity didn’t bother to look up to see where exactly they’d gone. She didn’t really care enough to check.

“I dunno,” Verity replied. “There are a bunch of ‘em. Can’t name just one.”

“Nah, you can,” said the shadow. “It’s Whiplash. And for, like, all the wrong reasons as well.”

Verity didn’t respond. She just leaned her head on the suddenly more comfortable edge. Breathed out. Waited.

“Like, when Fletcher was talking about how there’s nothing worse than the words ‘good job’? You took that at face value. Ignored everything about how Fletcher was a shitty person and a terrible teacher and decided that actually he was the good guy. Decided from that point on that you were going to take all the shit you could because it’d make you a tougher person in the end. Have no friends, have your parents hate you, be on the track for flunking out of school but pretend that you were fine with that because it was just constructive criticism. That it’d help you be better in the end. As if Neiman wasn’t going to just die of a drug overdose after the credits rolled.”

A breath out from the shadow. From the other Verity.

“Your turn.”

Verity… blinked. Took a breath. Thought up a question, asked it.

"How about an album where you like every single song?" she said. "It doesn't have to be your favorite album ever, just one where every piece just works."

“Oh, that’s easy. The Father of Death.”

“Oh, shit,” Verity said. “I… yeah I gave you an easy question, didn’t I?”

“It’s my favourite album,” the other said, ignoring Verity. “I love it so much. I think it’s the best thing ever made. I try to force it on my friends and try to sing its praises in music class but I completely fail to understand that it’s nerd shit. That it’s literally just grimdark Mega Man fanfiction. That absolutely no-one would care about it but me. And that makes me sad.”

Another breath, from Verity. It came in a little harder. Came out a little rougher.

“Okay, my turn again,” said the shadow. There was a little mental image of the other putting a finger up on her lip. Exaggerating how she was thinking the question through. “What do you think about Bethan Gayle?”

“You mean…” Verity’s foot tapped the floor of the playground. It was still woodchip. “Like, the… fuck, what’s the word? Think she said she was cybergoth?”

“Yeah, the girl who looks like she’s fucking colourblind,” said the other. “Like, seriously, does she even look at a mirror in the morning? Does she not realize she looks fucking stupid? Like, I don’t really know anything about her but she must’ve been one of the scholarship kids because nobody who walks around like that and has absolutely no issue with it must be, like, I dunno. A rich kid idiot. Doesn’t really care about how well they do because they know they’ve always got mum and dad’s money to fall back on. Do you even know why people like her?”

This honestly just felt exhausting at this point.

“I dunno,” Verity replied.

“Maybe it’s because she’s actually happy being herself. Maybe it’s because she's outgoing and bubbly and not really afraid of what others think of her. Maybe it’s because she actually takes the effort to go out and make friends, rather than sitting around in the library and the mindfulness room all day waiting for people to come around and like her. You ever think about that?”

Right.

She was done with this.

“Okay,” Verity replied. “My turn. Are you just going to twist around all my questions and answers so that you can let me know how shit I am?”

“Hey, not my fault.”

“...Did I just set myself up?”

“Yep. Wanna know why?”

“...Sure.”

“Because I’m the type of person who can never be happy. Who can never have enough. I’ll still be around in five years and I’ll be living my dream and hanging out with friends who love me and there’ll be something about me I’m still so fucking critical of. Maybe there’ll still be problems, but, like, why try to actually fix them? Why actually try to better yourself when you can just bitch and moan about how everything sucks and nobody understands me and how there’s absolutely no way out of any of this? Doesn’t actually help anything in the long run, but, like, maybe it makes you feel better about yourself in the moment. And, like, why actually put in the work for something when you can get to the good part now?”

A breath in, a breath out.

A breath in, a breath out.

“...Shut up,” growled Verity.

“Nah,” said the shadow. “It’s my turn to ask a question.”

The sound of footsteps, on the grass, then on the playground, getting louder and louder as they got closer and closer. The feeling of warmth, human, rising, the hairs on her arms becoming pinpricks.

The sight of the other, leaning over the tire swing, eyes like Verity’s staring into her own. Another smile of crooked teeth, stretching end to end.

“Let’s go for the big one,” said the real Verity. “What’s the biggest problem facing your life right now?”

At least this time Verity had the sense to find a bed before her mind dipped out of her body again.

And at least it hadn’t lasted as long. Maybe, at least. It felt kinda like a nap. She’d closed her eyes and she’d opened them again and part of her knew that time had passed. She didn’t really know how she really knew that — didn’t even know how much time had passed — but she just did. Kinda like when you laid down on your bed after school and then whoops there went the entire afternoon. Gone, just like that. This time, though. Didn’t really feel like it’d been that long. No… real indication of just how long; Verity just knew. She kinda hoped she knew. She didn’t really have any way of proving otherwise.

Number one piece of advice for any future contestants reading this: wear a watch. Pointless as shit in real life when you had a phone or a laptop around you, real useful when all that suddenly got stripped away from you. When the only way to even tell how many days had passed were Ritzy’s announcements. When your life as you knew it had been absolutely obliterated and you needed every little thing you could to keep you human. Keep a couple of the privileges that you used to have.

Really would’ve helped these past few days. That was for certain.

She let her left hand out, let it drop over the side of the bed. Felt the ruff of the bag, pulled it up. Checked it. Clothes, mostly. Most of Timothy’s, some of hers which she’d dumped to make more room for the good shit from his bag. Some extra medical supplies that she didn’t really know how to use. Bandages that in between her knocking herself out with the antiseptic and all the time she’d taken since her injuries she hadn’t really bothered putting them on. Didn’t really seem like there was much of a point. There’d been salt from the ocean poured into all her wounds several hours before she got to cover them. If she thought hard enough about it she could feel them begin to fester already. There was nothing she could really do. And, like, if she had a choice between pretending bandaging herself was going to help and kind of just chilling on this bed forever then… she’d take the one break she’d had for a long while.

Not like it’d impact anything.

Not like she could impact anything.

‘Cause, like, what could she even do? She was down a hand. She was down an eye. There was still just kind of a gooey blob of pain whenever she touched around up there. So, like, again, what could she even do? She’d managed to walk fine enough when she went outside for a bit and found Sofia but what would happen if she had to run? What would happen if she had to fight? She could see it now. She’d look so pathetic. She’d be trying to shoot someone and then because she only had one eye all her shots would go wild and she’d be left wide open for anybody else to finish her off. No. There was no point. She’d make no difference to anything. Fisk and Mandy were better off without having her to carry around.

So this was it.

The rest of her life would be spent in this room. One way or another, her story ended here. Maybe someone would come into this random room in this random corridor and take her out of her misery. Maybe she’d just fade back out of consciousness and never come back. Maybe, somehow, Fisk and Mandy would be able to get rid of everybody else without her, and the next time she woke up she’d be getting actual treatment for her injuries. Maybe they didn’t need her anymore. Maybe they were fine enough on their own.

Fisk seemed like he liked Mandy more than he did Verity, anyway.

But either way, this was it. She’d come so far, done so many things, and now she got the privilege of bleeding out and pretending it was just like falling asleep.

Was this an adequate ending? Could she be happy with how it all went?

…

…

Not really.

Because there’d still be so many unanswered questions at the end of it all. Why had she killed Akeno? Why had Verity pulled her off the cruise ship with her? Why had she gone in to stab her when they both could’ve walked away from that? How had she become one of the Respects? When did she go from intending to betray Fisk to becoming his closest ally? Why had she done basically any of the things she’d done? This… this wasn’t something like A Series of Unfortunate Events where she could sail off into The Great Unknown and leave everything up in the air. No. She was a question. She needed answering. She needed clarity, at the end of it all. Why was she here? What had all of this been for?

Who was she, at the end of it all?

Was she a killer? Was she a clear-cut bad guy? Was she maybe, at least, something more sympathetic? Was she a would-be traitor who eventually became her mask? Was she ever going to live up to all those promises she made, back in the banquet hall, next to Calla’s body? Could she have been capable enough to stop anybody from reaching the ten, had she not been brought so far off course? Was there a universe where she herself might have gone for the ten, had circumstances pushed her in that direction? Was there a universe where she kept herself in perspective, kept herself an enemy of the Respects? Could she ever have been able to kill Bacchia? Could she ever have met Leah again? Met Matias?

Who was she, ultimately?

Was she just somebody who said shit they didn’t really mean?

...

…

She didn’t know. She was…

She was somebody.

She was a person. She was a contestant. She was a character.

She had a story. She had an identity.

She needed to figure out what it was. Who she was.

And she knew, for a fact, that she couldn’t do that just fizzling out on a bed. She couldn’t just let it end here. She had to keep on going. She had to keep the flame alight.

Burn as bright as she wanted it.

Burn as fast as she could keep it going.

Burn out exactly when she didn’t need it anymore.

She sat up. Looked in the bag again. Clothes. Other shit. Bandages. She took them out. Put them close where her other eye had once been.

Looked in the bag again. Put the bandages down.

She had a better idea.

Verity blinked.

Kinda thought about it for a bit.

“I dunno,” she said, her eyes rolling away from the gaze directed at her. “There’s been a lot.”

“Fair,” shrugged the other. “Kind of a bad question.”

“Is it weird?”

“Is what weird?”

“How I’ve felt about all this,” replied Verity. “Like, you’d think spending… however long I’ve been on SotF would feel worse than it actually does.”

Another shrug.

“I mean…” The other Verity paused. “It’s not like everything was okay before this, either.”

“Where am I, anyway?” Verity tilted her head up. Tried to meet the gaze of the shadow, who was sitting, weightless, on the edge of the tire swing to Verity’s left. “Or, well, when am I? Is this the day before I get taken? Or…”

“You’re on the cruise ship right now,” the shadow replied. “You took a lot of damage against Akeno. You’ve been kinda… flitting in and out of consciousness since then.”

“And you’re…”

“I’m you.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Say please.”

A sigh, from Verity. A giggle, from the other.

“I’m your countervoice, basically. Like, you know that little voice in the back of your head that constantly whispers about how you’re a total piece of shit and makes you doubt everything you do?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s me.”

“...Wow,” huffed Verity.

“Wow?”

“This is so pretentious.”

“Being self-aware about how the thing is bad doesn’t mean that you can’t call the thing bad anymore.”

“Like, okay,” Verity said, putting both her hands in front of her face. “I’m talking to the physical manifestations of my ego or my inner demons or something about what everything actually represents. I’m simultaneously walking through the park the day before I was taken for SotF and also talking with one of my old friends who I wrote into one of my SotF RPs and also I’m, like, right here, right now, bleeding out somewhere in the corridors?”

“Roughly.”

“God, I’ve become a monster,” Verity cackled. “It’s me. I’m the Lars von Trier of SotF.”

The other Verity laughed too.

“Welcome to the mind fuck.”

“Fucking tell me about it,” Verity replied. “So, like, lemme try and figure all of this out.”

“Sure.”

“So, like, I’m unconscious. I got, like, brain damage or something when I fell into the ocean or when I lost my eye or when I just poured like, a litre of antiseptic into the wound or whatever just happened.” She paused. Took a breath. “And all of this is just, like, my brain trying to reconfigure what it can because now there’s a bit of it that’s damaged and band-aids won’t fix it. Is that right?”

The other Verity shrugged.

“And now I’m like, in one of my memories, or whatever, while my brain’s in the middle of making itself work again?”

The other Verity shrugged.

“Am I going to get amnesia or something?”

The other Verity shrugged.

“Well, like, if you need to figure out what storage space to delete,” continued Verity, “you can just, like, delete everything before SotF. All of it.”

That got the other’s attention. It jolted. Shook its head for a second. Stared at Verity, dumbfounded.

“What?”

“You heard me,” Verity replied.

“Why?”

“Why do you fucking think?” Verity said, eyes intent on the sky above. “I mean, it’s not like any of it fucking matters now. It’s not like I’m Verity anymore. Like, you saw me when I killed Akeno. She was under me. She was trying to get out of the water. The minute beforehand I was begging for her to let us both away from this then the first moment I get where she doesn’t have me cornered I gut her like a fucking fish. I didn’t have a reason in my head. I didn’t have a reason to try and pull her into the water in the first place. I did it because I could. I killed her because I could.”

Breath.

“I’m not… I’m not Verity anymore. I’m just a thing. I’m just an it. I’m here and unless it’s Fisk I’m talking to I bring out Timothy’s gun and I make them die. It doesn’t matter who I was before they took me because I’m not that person anymore. They’ve degraded me. They set me out to kill everybody because I think everybody hates me and get the season going and they were going to make me fodder for one of the actual villains once it was clear I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore and then somehow I stuck around and now I’m just… here. They ran out of lines for me to say. I’m here to stand around Fisk and make people die and-”

Breath.

“And I’m not even any good at it. I’m so shit. I talk with Fisk, right in the restaurant, and we both kinda have to start accepting that maybe Sofia and James aren’t coming back and we might just be the only ones left and… I don’t even remember what I said. I don’t even remember if I was able to say much of anything. Because here comes Gregory, we catch him out, we start interrogating him and trying to recruit him, and then, like, I just let Fisk handle the conversation. I just stand around. I could maybe think about James or Sofia or I could maybe, like, be a part of the conversation but, like, it’s not my place. This is Fisk and Gregory. I’m no longer needed so nobody knows what to do with me. I’m not-”

Breath.

“And when we killed Gregory, y’know? I could’ve done something. He was begging me to finish him off, give him mercy, and Fisk was fucking scaring me and being exactly the monster I was hoping he actually wasn’t and you know what I did? I left the room. Fisk told me what to do and then I did it. And- and- he was pretty haunted by it afterwards, and he was talking about how there was nothing left for him outside of here, and you know what I did? I tried to manipulate him. I should’ve… I should’ve just tried to cheer him up or convince him but no, I just suddenly tried to be one of my RP characters and told him to his face that he had to keep being evil. I… every time I talk to him I’m so inconsistent. I just keep saying the dumbest shit.”

Breath.

“And that’s what I am, right? I’m just… there. I say shit that doesn’t even matter and when someone else walks into the room I’m not there anymore. Like with Gregory. Like with Mandy. I’m nothing. I’m just… a thing that makes people die.”

Breath.

“And… that’s just funny. Y’know? Because right when this began I was going on my soapbox complaining about how everybody here’s just like “hey mom I’m on TV I’m gonna kill everybody I knew from Mangrove wheeeeeeee” and, like, what the fuck was I then? Even before then I killed Timothy because I could and then I killed my best friend and then I killed someone I really could’ve been friends with and then I killed Junji and Akeno just because they were there and I could’ve. It didn’t matter who they were. It didn’t matter that I’d spent the past four years of school with them. They weren’t Timothy, or Keegan, or Alyssa, or Junji, or Akeno, they were just video game people. I’m just a video game person at this point.”

One last breath, held longer than the others.

“So if you can, then… just get rid of it all. If I’m… If I’m just supposed to be a thing that kills people, then…”

She shut her eyes. Kept them tight.

“...Then the least you can do is make it easier.”

She tried to take a breath.

She tried to take a breath.

She tried to take a breath.

Then:

“You don’t… you don’t get it, do you?”

There was the feeling of skin on skin. A hand touching her hand. Pulling it up. Holding it tight.

“I don’t get what?” Verity replied.

“They’re not dead,” said the shadow. “They’re here. With you.”

Another hand. Tapping her forehead. Pointing at it, for a moment, before stroking its fingers through Verity’s hair.

“And you’re the only one who can keep them alive.”

She’d found a mirror.

And she’d found some scissors. She’d found a t-shirt in Timothy’s bag that had a decent colour, and she’d found an angle where she could cut a strap long enough to wrap around her head. She was looking at it, right now. It was the same colour as her bandanna, wrapped in an angle around the flesh that’d once been her left eye, tucked behind her ear, wrapped around the area between her cheek and her jaw. Meant that it was going to keep catching on her mouth whenever she tried to speak, but whatever. Not as if she ever had much to say anyway. Maybe this would encourage her to stop trying to go on monologues even when they sounded clunky as hell. Keep her mouth shut. That’d be for the better.

She looked at the rest of herself, as well. Saw her hair, let down all wet and messy and raggedy. It’d been like that… since she’d jumped in the water. Talked with Leah and Rhonda and Akeno. Had a shower right afterwards. Making the pigtails seemed like too much pointless effort, so… she saw her shirt. Saw her pants. Saw her jacket. She’d wore these through all her… however much time she’d even spent here. Nothing else they’d given her was half as good as this. Like, even if the moth on her t-shirt was faded from all the seawater and sweat and salinity, even if her jacket had that big tear from where Akeno had fired a harpoon at it, even if it all chafed at her wrists and neck because she hadn’t worn anything else for such a long time, she kept it. This was who she was. This was who she still wanted to be, even after she’d gotten onto SotF. Even after everything had changed.

She wasn’t Verity anymore. She knew that. She wasn’t that girl who played piano and wrote garbage and liked doing nerd shit and hated fucking everything to do with her real life. She wouldn’t ever be that girl again. She’d gone through the machine. She didn’t get to choose which parts of her remained. She didn’t get to choose how everything went. Who she’d ultimately become.

But she looked in the mirror, and she saw something there. It wasn’t the Verity that’d been there that day she’d been shoved into a van while walking to the bus, but it was something still there. Still her.

She was Verity Stewart.

And she was Timothy Torales. And Alyssa Tibbett. And Akeno Kudo. And Bacchia. And James. And Keegan. And Vasily. And Fisk. Rhonda. Leah. That one girl down in the bowels who she never got the name of. She was Sofia. Lucille. Stokes. Chris. Junji. Matias. Mandy.

She was everybody she’d met.

She was everybody she remembered. And she was everybody who’d been a part of changing her, piece by piece.

She was a five-time murderer. She was obviously one of the bad guys. Maybe, if someone looked deep inside enough, somebody could make the argument that she was more complicated than that, but she was here, none of that stuff really mattered. She was a would-be traitor who eventually became her mask. Became one of them. She was someone who was never realistically going to keep any of those promises she’d made back next to Calla’s body. She was a force with no agency, whose story just went the direction the wind took her. There was never going to be a universe where she could’ve gone for the ten. There was never going to be a universe where she stayed her course, kept her promises. She was never going to be able to kill Bacchia. She would never have gotten the chance to meet Leah, meet Matias again.

Because she knew who she was now: she was Verity Stewart. She was the her that was staring into this mirror, right here, right now.

And she sure couldn’t have been anybody else.

She was going to go out there.

And she was going to be exactly who she needed to be.

But she… just needed to do one last thing first. She made her gaze fall towards the mirror. Stood up straight. Looked herself in the eye. Breathed in, breathed out.

Breathed in-

Verity… kept her mouth shut. Tried to get a grasp on what had just been said. Tried to wrap her head around it.

It didn’t really work out all that well.

“What do you mean?”

The other Verity spent a long, long time looking up, into the distance. At her memory of the park. At her memory of the sky beyond. Verity didn’t bother to look alongside. She knew it wouldn’t be like the real thing. She knew it wouldn’t feel the same anymore. She just laid back. Kept her eyes closed. Waited for the other to speak again.

Eventually, she did.

“You remember the Lion King musical?”

God, it’d been so long since she’d really listened to music.

“You know the part where…” The other Verity paused, for a bit. “God, it’s been so long for me too. You know that bit where Simba’s at the plains with Rafiki and Mufasa appears in the sky and Rafiki sings that really awesome song about how Mufasa still lives through all the people who knew him?”

“...Yeah,” Verity replied. He Lives In You. She remembered loving it as a child. She remembered loving it, even in the days before she’d been taken.

“I’m Rafiki, you’re Simba. Everybody else is Mufasa.”

“Everybody?”

“Yeah, everybody. Not just… the people you’ve killed. All the others you’ve met. All of them… who they were before this, that’s going to be forgotten. They’ve been put into the… TV glitz and glamour machine, and all people are going to remember is what they became. How they died. You’re the only person who saw them for who they really were. Who they could’ve been. You have to keep that alive. Keep them from… disappearing.”

“But how?”

Verity’s eyes were finally open. She was looking… not at the shadow. Past the shadow. At the sky, at the world, at all the things in her mind.

“How do… I do that? How can I try? We-” She took a breath. “We both know that there isn’t long left. We both know that I’m not making it out of this place. How can I… how is… how…”

“You’ll figure it out.”

The other Verity leaned forward, stepped off the rope swing, and walked around. Stopped when she was in front of the real Verity. Stared down, for a moment.

“It’s you against the ones writing your story. You’ve beaten them before. You can beat them again.”

“But… how? How do I start?”

And then the other Verity stepped forward, into the wheel swing. It was like… a ghost moving through a wall. It kept moving forward, through Verity’s legs, right up to her hips before it stopped. Looked down. Touched Verity’s waist with one hand.

“You’re the only one who can determine how this all ends.”

The other Verity leaned forward, Touched Verity’s forehead. Brought its face up to hers.

“Make sure you do it right.”

And then the shadow moved in. Kissed her.

It was… odd. Alien. Verity had never been kissed but also she’d seen kisses and she’d read about kisses and she’d written kisses and somehow that provided a kind of simulacrum. Made it feel like something Verity had never felt. It was… like lips on lips. Like skin on skin. Like neither of those things. Like nothing. Like it was the day before she’d been taken and she was laying on the tire swing in the park, just wondering what the point to all of this was, and also like this was all real, that there was someone on top of her right now, like there was someone who loved her, like there was someone who knew everything about her and fully understood. It was warm and cold. It was everything and nothing. It was perfect, and…

It was perfect.

It only lasted for a moment. A second or two later, the other Verity broke it off. Lifted her head away. Looked Verity in the eyes.

“Got it?”

There was no gap. No pause to think about what needed to be said next. Verity just nodded. Met the gaze of the girl looking at her.

“Yeah.”

...breathed out.

“Got it.”

((Verity Stewart: Begin))