ali bomaye

[Melusine]

That was a lie. Or, that was an misspoken truth.

Either way, any actions had a reaction. Whether it would be now with soft moans or later with loud screams, Willow would have to pay Daria back even if the latter didn't know it. Willow had to pay things back. She couldn't, wouldn't, let her debts go unpaid until she finally croaked.

"You're a sweetheart, you know that?" She murmured genuinely, throwing her head back.

She wasn't going to cry even if she wanted to. Willow didn't cry when- no, she did. She cried all the time someone died, she cried when someone got hurt, she cried when her friends' names showed up on the announcement. Even if she didn't want to assume it, there was still the looming truth that she had a been a fake all along.

Willow choked out a cry. She was tired, she was scared and she wanted to die. It was the three constants of Willow's life, outside or inside the island. Tired, scared, suicidal. The three of them were the cause of her most enjoyed pastime: wishing for death. It was the only thing she could do right on her own, she needed help with everything else because she was damn useless and couldn't even protect herself.

She cried, not because of the pain, but because she was helpless. It was an important distinction to make. Pain was a friend of Willow; helplessness was a bad nightmare came to life. Trying to change the topic from her inner monologue as an attempt to wrangle back the control on her own narrative, Willow smiled through her teeth.

"S-so, why are you speaking like a cowboy again?"

[Grim Wolf]

"You're a sweetheart, you know that?" Willow murmurred, and there were tears in her voice, and Daria did her best to keep her eyes from Willow's face, not wanting her to feel anymore exposed.

"I do, thanks," Daria said, with a smile. She kept tending to the wound, kept her eyes forwards as Willow squirmed and bit back tears and finally began to sob. Still Daria kept to her clumsy work. She didn't know what the hell she was doing, but she didn't want to make Willow feel any worse, or show her confusion. She had a role to play, after all.

"S-so, why are you speaking like a cowboy again?"

This time Daria did look at her, drawing herself upright with affronted indignation. "My dear," she drawled, and now it was not a cowboy's face but Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, a Byronic Southern gentleman full of complex rage. "Are you insinuating I might be something other than what I claim to be?"

She let the moment hang, then grinned and bent forward again. "You know me, Will. Drama queen to the last."

She thought she might leave it there, and then discovered she couldn't. Willow had asked, and it had been so long since she'd gotten to talk about this stuff. Steph hadn't really understood it, and neither had Chris, and Tony and Aliya had their own troubles, and Carrie had her own demons-

And the weight of the dead, and all her failures, were settling in again.

"It's an idea, I guess," Daria said. "Going against them...against the game...facing all this..." She shrugged. "Spent a lot of my life feeling like I was playing roles. Didn't mind it. Loved it. Learn the role, get inside its head, figures out what works, what doesn't, how your self fits into it." She paused, thinking of the screaming fights with her mother, of the tutoring sessions and the programming classes and the savings account her parents still didn't know about, the one that was supposed to be for New York.

"There's comfort in it," Daria said. "In...acting like the thing you want to be. Like a heroic cowboy, tumbling out of the desert to right the wrongs of the town." Cowboy drawl in full effect, and then the voice changed, gained a little bit of Viggo Mortensen's guttural depth as he strode and shouted and murmured across the battlefields and kingdoms of Middle Earth. "Or a king, fighting to save his people!"

Maybe showing a little too much of her ass right now. Then again, she'd stripped down on the beach, and she hadn't exactly been shy since.

"Trying to be...larger than life," Daria said. "Whatever that means." Daria's smile widened. "What's the old saying? Fake it 'til you make it?"

She hesitated, then leaned back from the bizarre, disorderly dressing she'd secured in place on Willow's side. It didn't slip, whatever that was worth. "How's that feel?"

[Melusine]

Yeah. She knew about faking it until making it even if she never made it somewhere. She nodded at Daria's statement. Willow understood what she was going through despite her limited range of empathy because of her gunshot wound. Coping with trauma by taking up roles and playing them out like a play was a very common thing to do.

She nods again, her eyes shutting close. Willow listened without talking about Daria's attempt to counterinteract the entire game. It made sense. She breathed in the explanation slowly and exhaled it even slower. Willow didn't like how it felt, but she didn't hate it either. She was slowly fading into that gray area that she tried her best to avoid.

Willow opened her eyes, staring off at the ceiling. Her vision was clear now, probably due to the adrenaline in her body deciding to withdraw itself once the threats were manage. Or, it was because the substance had finally ran out after twelve days. Probably the latter, Willow smiled again. This time, it was directed at her own stubborn body that forced her to live while her mind desperately wanted out.

"It feels fine," she lied as effortlessly as she breathe, truly a perk of being a modern day woman, "you said something though."

Willow tried to perk herself up on her elbows but only crashed back down on the couch. She just wanted to be dominant for this, nothing else. She tried again, looking at the bandaged wound. It looked terrible, but it also looked dressed, so she couldn't really whine about it. Still, she let out a whimper and maybe a moan when she moved again.

"Something about going against the game." A pause, a meticulously prepped one. "What do you want to do about that?"

[Grim Wolf]

"It feels fine," Willow lied, and Daria chuckled at the sheer audacity of it, Will lying as she sat there, pale and shuddering and shaken as she tried to leverage herself upright. Daria started to reach out to to help her, and stopped herself; she wasn't the only woman in the room playing a role, and she had done enough to let Daria treat her, as idiotically and haphazardly as she had.

Idiotic and haphazard, that's the Daria guarantee.

"I'm glad," Daria said, smiling so Willow didn't think she was laughing at her.

"Something about going against the game," Will said, and paused, and Daria felt her breath and her blood pausing with her, hanging on her next words. "What do you want to do about that?"

"What do I want..." Daria murmurred, looking down at her hands. She was thinking of Carrie, and the demons she saw in Quinn's eyes. She was thinking of Quinn, trying so hard to be the demon Carrie had seen. She was thinking of Connor and his unassuming arrogance, and his killer, who had just fled from this house. She was thinking of Blaise, and her soft malice. She was thinking of Stephanie, with her glazed, unseeing eyes.

"We're gonna die, Willow," Daria said, still looking at her hands. "You, me, everybody on this island." She paused, managed a strangled sort of laugh. "That was...that was true from the moment we woke up with these things on." Daria tapped the collar on her neck. "How many of us were there at the start? 200? And we were all...we were always..."

There was no role to play now. Just Daria, facing it once again, with Willow's blood on her fingers and Steph's corpse rotting somewhere nearby and her own death falling towards her like a setting sun.

"Talked to a few people," Daria said. "About it. Some friends. Some killers. Kinda don't know how I made it this far." Another strangled laugh, with a hint of tears. "Tried to tell them my..."

Daria lifted her eyes from her hands to Willow's face. "The trick they use," Daria said. "To get us killing...to play their game...is the idea of a winner. That if we can just...hold on, and fight, one of us might...make it home. Appeals to the hero in you, don't it? I'm special. I'll be the one."

Memories of Quinn on the beach. Memories of rain pouring down on her back, and floating in the ocean.

"But that's bullshit, Will," Daria said. "I mean, mathematically, 99:100 is 99%, so even if you buy into it you're not...not buying yourself a chance. Not really. Odds might be close to these things just not...working." She waved vaguely at the collar. "Might be a dud. Wanna pull it off and find out?" A black smile spread across her face. "And it's bullshit because...because we were all special. None of us deserves to be here. None of us deserves to have a fucking bomb to our neck. The people who died aren't failures, and the people alive right now aren't any more special than the dead, and it's all just...lies. Lies to make you to buy into the system so you're not just...looking at them. Looking at how they set this up. Set up a game that was always gonna kill all of us, then made us pull the triggers for them. So we're not just saying fuck you, and telling'em we ain't playing."

Daria shook her head, looked out the window. She could just make out Steph's house.

"24 hours," Daria said. "24 hours without a kill, and they're supposed to blow our collars. I wanna call'em out. I wanna make'em put their money where their fucking mouths are. Maybe they back down. Probably not." Daria turned her eyes back to Willow, trying to show every ounce of her feelings on her face; every ounce of her anger, her sadness, her grief, her fear...and her resolve. "They're cowards. I wanna make'em face it. Make'em face what they're doing. Make'em face us, and show them we're better than that." She paused, and a softer smile. "Plus I figure 24 hours talking to people I like's a better way to go than acting out some torture porn bullshit. If I gotta die, I'd rather go for the Oscar, y'know?"

[Melusine]

Willow knew this already. She knew about her imminent death, about her inevitable failures, about everything. Willow knew everything about her fate, and she'd been working on another path instead. She always adjusted after her mistakes, so right now, she was just force correcting yet another path that had led to nowhere.

"I get it but," Willow laid her head against the armrest, "you're wrong."

She sighed softly as if she didn't want to agitate the wound on her that was finally resting. Despite feeling her heart in it, Willow stopped caring about it. It wasn't really something that mattered anymore. Physical injuries meant nothing compared to the pain this experience had created.

"For eleven days," she pauses, gathering her words. "I tried to get someone to see the truth. To get them to win, to get them to be the final one but they didn't want it. They wanted me to win and I'm not really sure why. I tried with Sierra and I tried with Katrina and in their last moments, they both asked me to go home for them."

Not exactly, but it was what they meant.

"Now on the twelfth day, you're asking me to spit on their last wishes?" She asks. But it was rhetorical so she continued. "Meet me at the halfway point, Daria."

Words. It was all words. Words this, words that. Words ruled the world of violence. Words didn't mean anything until the actions behind it showed them to light. Willow hated words. She preferred actions.

"At this point, nobody will go through with your plan because everyone knows better than so," Willow was good at getting others at selling their souls. She should try to become the Devil's lawyer once she died and reincarnated and became something she deserved. "I say we outlast everyone, just the two of us. Once everyone else is dead, we stop it. They'll have to either blow both of us up or admit they can't do anything to the world. I like your scenario, Daria, I really do, but it just won't work with the cast we're working with."

[Grim Wolf]

There were many things Daria could have said, and they played in their head almost as quickly as Willow Spoke.

Of course I'm wrong, she wanted to say. It would have hurt to admit it, but Daria didn't know what else she could do. Carrie and Connor had abandoned her while she slept; Quinn had decreed herself an adamant monster; Daria had almost been shot every time she'd tried to preach her gospel to strangers; Blaise had killed Stephanie. The past twelve days were a litany of Daria's wrongness. She knew her plan was foolish now. She had come here hunting Blaise, after all.

Fuck their last wishes, she wanted to say (or maybe not quite that but something like that or hell maybe exactly that, the words and memories of the dead had been haunting the living since mankind first came down out of the trees, people died and tortured and raped and killed for dead men and dead women and dead nations, it's another broken system, another rigged game, except you can't say that, Daria, not when you're here with Steph's words and Steph's memory driving you on, you're no better than any of them, another player in their broken game, another idiot human fighting and dying for the dead.

There's no halfway anymore, she wanted to say, and what she really meant was there had never been a halfway, halfway was a lie, a trick the powerful told you so you wouldn't think to challenge their power, gild their predation on the powerless with reason and compromise, and if it was true out there and it was worse here, where they kept convincing all of them to keep playing a game no one could win, make them do their dirty work for them, and Daria was so tired of compromising.

Then Willow finished speak, and Daria spoke at once, naked fear and weakness in her voice: "You want to stay with me?"

[Melusine]

"Yeah."



































"Please don't leave me."

[Grim Wolf]

Daria's eyes were wide, her face pale: she looked stunned or struck, barely able to think or speak. One hand fumbled out, looking for Willow's. Her racing thoughts careened, threatening to crash.

Not again.

She'd been here before; Steph, standing in their little home, kind and funny and true. Steph, model-beautiful, compassionate, willing to listen. Steph, dead because Daria had let one killer go, and then let that killer kill her.

Killer kill her listen to the language the poetry of it this game is not a game it is their nightmare law they will killed Carrie killed Tony killed Aliya killed Steph they'll kill Willow they'll kill you

"Halfway," Daria said, though the word was slightly strangled by her doubts.

For a moment, she said nothing else. Her wide, unblinking eye still stared vaguely at Willow. After a moment, those eyes flickered to the window again; after a moment, she looked a little more herself. But there was that faint, manic edge to her movements, and to her words.

"I'm...here. Because Steph died. Was looking for Blaise. Looking for...justice." A laugh, every bit as strangled as her voice. "Don't know what that means. Haven't known. Since I woke up."

"Promises...not worth much," Daria whispered. "Not the cast for it, right? Maybe...maybe it never was."

Daria didn't know if that admission was comfort or despair.

"But what if...what if there's someone like us?" Daria asked. "Someone who doesn't...want to play? Some else fucked by the game, and wanting to fuck it back?" She shook her head. "Don't...don't want to leave them. Wouldn't want to get left, if it was me."

She squeezed Wills hand. "Halfway, like you said. We'll hold down the fort. But I can't...I won't lose hope. On justice. Or on the others. Or..." Her voice softened. "Or you, Will. Won't...won't put you in danger. Won't leave you alone." Another squeeze of hand. "Won't...leave."

[Melusine]

Willow squeezed back, letting her head rest on the armrest. She squeeze back again, making sure that Daria was still there. Reassured that she wasn't gone, or rather, that she was real, Willow's giggling came back. She wasn't sure in what she got herself into yet again, so her giggling started to echo louder and louder.

"Haha," she continues, "hum, hah, hum, Daria?"

She manages to hitch herself back up in a sitting position. Her wound was still facing the ceiling, desperately trying to avoid more bloodshed. The sofa was already ruined. It made her upset. Too upset, actually. Maybe it was part because of the bloodloss or maybe it was because of the fever raising up in her body, but she felt too dizzy to comprehend why.

She let a giggle out again, her raw throat hating the schizm her laughter created. She would be fine though, she was always fine. She just really bad at killing herself. Willow knew that already, but she tested it out every time she could. Truly, Willow was born to be a scientist.

"I'll meet your halfway," she smiled, her face cut in half with a smile, "I'll help you to find people who want to join our cause."

Her smile vanish when her fingers intruded her body again. The pain felt strange. It was as if she wasn't in this body. It felt like she was seeing herself from the third person, that she was someone above staring back at her life like a movie. But it wasn't a good movie, it was borderline terrible with a shitty lead actress incapable of delivering her lines. Willow shoud have stick to her day job.

"But first," her voice was soft, almost like a caress, "can we sleep here? I... Can we cuddle?"

[Grim Wolf]

"I'll meet your halfway," Will smiled, with a smile so wide it washed away any trace of her pain and rage. "I'll help you to find people who want to join our cause."

Daria tried to smile, and found she couldn't quite manage it. Or maybe she was smiling--she couldn't see her own face--but the smile felt strange. It felt like it was fighting against her face, fighting against her self, and she couldn't quite describe what she was feeling right now. It was like she was face to face with Blaise again, like there was danger in the room with her, everything about her tense and ready to strike.

"But first," her voice was soft, almost like a caress, "can we sleep here? I... Can we cuddle?"

Stephanie's glazed eyes stare sightlessly upwards. She's still warm in your lap.

Daria stared at her. There was no smile on her face. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open.

"I-" she stammered, and shook her head and stood up and both things were unconcious, she wasn't aware she was doing them, she was stumbling backwards with fear throbbing in the back of her head. "I can't-"

Nothing acting right now. Nothing calm, nothing focused. She kept remembering Stephanie.

"I need air," she gasped, and stumbled out of the house.

[Melusine]

Willow slumped back in her seat. Daria slipped away from the room, abandoning Willow to her lonely fate. She raised her knees to her chest, preparing herself to an onslaught of sobbing and crying. But it never came, Willow just stared at the door as Daria left her. A piece of her wanted to run after her, but she knew with only a handful of people left, it didn't really matter what she did.

Though, she did feel a tiny bit wronged by Daria. She shouldn't expect people to stick with her, but she still kinda did. Even if experiences prove her right, Willow still had that small doubt that people would mysteriously vanish if she were to lose her sight on them. It was exactly what happened to Roxie and Sierra and Katrina. One second, they were there, and the other, gone.

Daria could already be dead for that matter.

Did she care?

No.

Did she want to care?

Nope.

Could she care?

Allegedly.

She decided to enact on her absence of feelings. There had to be something hidden beneath the veil of indifference. Willow was too injured to rationally think about this, she just wanted to lay down and sleep for the next week. Which good thing, the game was going to end within the next two days if people stick to killing each other. Whether or not she lived, Willow won so she was pretty much set for the rest of her life.

Instead of following Daria, she laid down to her side, hugging her gun like a child holds a teddy bear. The gun was cold but it did the job to make her feel safe. She hadn't properly used it yet. She hated guns, they were loud and obnoxious. They echoed on this island, constantly reminding Willow that she will never enjoy fireworks again.

She counted her breathing, shutting her eyes shut. She inhaled for five seconds and the exhaled for three. Slowly, the numbers shifted. She inhaled less and less, her mind diverting itself from the pain toward the lack of oxygen she was breathing. She breathed in for two and breathed out for six, her stomach started to hurt but it was a reminder that it was working.

As her brain craved for oxygen, she slowly fell into the precious delirious moment before sleep. Right inbetween dream and reality, Willow found where she called home. In there, she finally let herself fall asleep.

((Willow continued to the next thread.))

[Grim Wolf]

This is stupid.

She already knew that. She'd known it long before she left the house; she'd known it the moment Will had answered Daria with affirmation. She should have been glad. The plan wasn't over. Her plan to save the Island. The plan she'd been working on when she and Carrie had found each other. The plan she hadn't figured out before she'd left Christ. The plan that hadn't been able to save Tony or Aliya. The plan that hadn't been able to stop Blaise. The plan that hadn't been able to save Steph.

The grief of their loss--their loss, and the loss of the dozen others who had died before Daria could say anything to them--had given her the strength to run after gunfire, and to try and patch Will's wound. But as adrenaline drained away, there was nothing left but the grief...and the fear.

It could happen again. All her plans, all her hopes, all her self-assurance in the face of death...none of it mattered for the people she cared about. Losing Carrie hurt. Losing Tony hurt. Losing Aliya hurt. Losing Stephanie...

Stephanie's head is in your lap. Willow's ribs are in your hand.

"Can we cuddle?"

Daria was the one holding her hand. Daria was the one trying to be a source of comfort. What a fucking hypocrite, to freak out now that Will wanted more. Might lie in her lap, her eyes closed so Daria couldn't even tell if she was dead or alive, if she was still warm as her blood spilled out of her or-

So many ways Daria could lose her. So many ways she could be alone again, without ever knowing her friend had died.

She was outside the house, gasping for air, and in spite of the bright sunshine everything felt hemmed in by darkness, drained of color. The house where Stephanie's body lay was just ahead, and Daria stumbled towards it numbly, almost blind with panic, with need. She didn't know what she looked like to the cameras. She didn't care. This felt...primal was the only way she could describe it. Whatever she was doing, she was doing at the level of instinct. She wanted to sink down into this place where she didn't have to think didn't have to feel where could just move

She stopped outside the door to the house. She pressed a hand against the door, but couldn't quite bring herself to enter. She remembered the stink of her grandma's body. She remembered the weight of her absence.

Steph's absence was worse. Steph's absence was Daria's fault.

"What am I supposed to do?" Daria asked, and hated how her voice shook.

She had Steph's last words in her head. She heard Quinn, her voice like ice cutting through the seaside drizzle. She remembered Carrie, asking for reassurance in the aftermath of a gunshot. For the monsters she saw in the eyes of people she could recognize.

"So many people are gone," she whispered, leaning forward to rest her against the door, too. A moment later, and her head jerked back, remembering how she had talked to Blaise through just such a door. Her hand curled into a fist. She needed to find Blaise. She needed to hurt her for what she'd done.

No. She wanted to hurt Blaise. She needed to bring her to justice.

What am I, fucking Batman?

It's not about being Batman. It's not about playing a role (although like you said to Will, you'll play any one you need to, to get you where you're going). This game is wrong. Blaise is wrong. As long as you're alive, you gotta try to set it right.

Not gonna be alive for long.

Made it this far, didn't I?

That didn't prove anything. It could have been Daria as easily was it was Steph. Blaise had let her go, for her own fucked up reasons. Blaise had killed Steph, for her own fucked up reasons. Microcosm of the whole fucking game. Living and dying didn't prove anything. Didn't mean anything. They all mattered. They all deserved to live.

Even Blaise?

Daria stared at the door. She closed her eyes, and knocked upon it once.

"I'll come by later," she said. "Get your advice."

She walked back to the other house, still not quite sure what she was going to say to Will. The idea of curling up with Willow...on some level, it sounded so nice. The simple physical comfort of Steph's safe presence had been so damn reassuring

and she's dead she's dead she's dead it's your fault

And she had stopped walking with a full-body flinch, as fear and panic and shame crashed into her, all to the tune of her broken brain's mad refrain. Daria scowled, forced herself to start walking again. She'd talk to Willow. Explain where her head was at. End of the world, not exactly time to be shy...

Willow was asleep.

Daria stared at her, curled up and spooning her gun. She felt a flash of...was that annoyance? Are you annoyed at her for not staying up until you've finished your fucking soliloquy, Daria? You're the one who fucking left the house screaming about needing air and you're going to take that out on Willow?

She started moving, closing the door behind her, pulling curtains closed, wedging spare furniture against doors as quietly as she could (special attention paid to the front door and the shattered window where Will had been shot: Blaise would not be sneaking up on either of them). When she felt as safe as she could, she returned to the living room, sat in a chair near Willow's sleeping head.

Time to have your nice post-script scene, Daria. Time to show that little bit of affection to let the audience know you're overcoming your ghosts. Gotta give the people closure, right? Gotta him them hope.

She tried to reach her hand out to stroke Will's head. Her hand wouldn't move. Her skin felt too tight, her chest felt too tight, her thoughts felt so tight. They were so close to the end now. So many people had died. And now she'd co-opted one more fool to her foolish plan. One more person she could grow to love. One more person who could die when Daria failed them. Or who Daria could fail by dying.

Too much panic. Had to shake it off. Find your center, Daria. Use your fear. Breathe in...breathe out...breathe in...breathe out...you'll get there, you always get there just keep breathing...in...out...in....out...calm's gonna come, calm always comes, always! Just breathe...in...out...

(Daria Bhatia continued in This Carousel Called Life)