Chapter Text
They didn’t kill her, thankfully. In fact, what they did do was mostly more of the same, although the circumstances were very different.
While Chastity had successfully stayed out of trouble with Sonia ever since, a few years had passed, and Sonia had started doing exactly what Temperance had warned her about back when she was still allowed to go home.
(“This is home, isn’t it?” Sonia would have said, if anyone had asked to go home. But she was counting on the fact that most of her followers had long since cut ties with their families and any homes they might have originally had, so no one did.)
Really, it seemed too easy that she would be able to steal one of the vehicles they had around the property and make off in it. But it was late and she was desperate.
Chass made a quiet promise to Raina – and her other friends, but mostly Raina – that she would come back for her at the very soonest opportunity. It would have just been too risky to try taking anyone else with her on the first attempt, and she’d already sworn to protect Raina every chance she got.
(Raina had sworn right back to always protect her in turn, but each secretly believed that she alone would be doing the protecting for both of them. They both got enough chances to prove themselves at various points, but some were more dramatic than others. Like now.)
In retrospect, she really should have been able to predict that they’d do something like this; leaving fully-fueled cars out in the open like that would have been just a little too tempting no matter how much faith Sonia had in her followers’ loyalty. But no matter, she thought; she was sure she could make it at least a little farther on foot. She could be fast when she needed to be. And it didn’t seem like anyone was following her.
Also in retrospect, she should have known there’d be people they could send out if someone or something went missing all of a sudden in the middle of the night, and people who’d be watching for that kind of thing in the first place. It was why no one ever tried to make a run for it even when it didn’t look like anyone was guarding the entrance. Really, it was almost an unusually foolhardy move on her part. Her only defense was, again, that it was late and she was desperate. Not to mention sleep-deprived and weakened by a lack of – well, a lot of things, even those she could normally function quite well without much of. She was running on only a little more fumes than the car was.
(She hadn’t eaten properly in a very long time. When she did get a chance it was stolen bites from bodies that were going to be burned or buried out in the desert or fed to one of Sonia’s associates’ pigs or something anyway, furtive and desperate and feral. She’d long since accepted by now that she was never going to live a normal life without this, but at home they at least cooked their meat before they ate it. She preferred being under the illusion that they were a level above wild animals, but when you were starving you took what you could get. Her grandmother and her mother could have told her that.)
All she could think of as she was thrown in the back of another car was that she could have done this to somebody else no problem, even in her current state. Sonia really missed out on not making her an enforcer or a guard or whatever these people were…
(Raina had seen her kill a number of people by now. Raina had killed people herself, had helped her do it, had clearly enjoyed herself doing it just as much as Chastity did, maybe even more sometimes. Sonia was sending them after various people she had some unknown personal beef with these days, and while none of them were important enough to draw much attention from the authorities, it seemed it was only a matter of time before someone figured out a pattern and the whole enterprise came crashing down. It might be a relief when it did, except there was no way Chastity was letting herself end up in prison after trying to get away from her family’s activities.)
She never did find out if it was Sisi and/or Célie hauling her back. She did know that they were the ones Sonia handed her off to after Chass was presented to her.
Sonia’s only response to Chastity being dropped off at the doorstep, where she stood waiting, was to sigh and shake her head sadly. Like she was disappointed in her, or something.
“Poor dear,” she said. “I thought for certain you’d have learned by now.”
Chastity barely reacted as she was led away. She knew exactly where she was going and she was pretty sure she knew what was going to happen. She even knew exactly who was going to do it to her.
It was the one thing she did accurately predict that night, although it was quite a bit harsher than last time, if that was possible. They also said less, presumably knowing that she knew what she was supposed to do.
“So you’ve come back,” was the only thing Sisi said, practically hissing it in her ear as soon as the door swung shut.
Chastity declined to respond. She was not particularly impressed by that comment.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Célie, voicing Chass’ thoughts exactly, and they started in on her.
By the end of it all, she was pretty sure she was bleeding, which was more than they had done last time around, but still, it wasn’t anything too much worse than she’d already experienced. Once again, she thought, she’d be fine.
The next morning, Raina saw her and gasped, and pressed her lips to each of her wounds and bruises, and tenderly helped her nurse them and do whatever she needed to bandage or salve or heal, and Chass was grateful, but she would not answer her questions about why.
“Just try to protect yourself,” Raina said, looking and sounding like she was trying not to cry.
“I’m protecting you,” Chastity said, surprising even herself.
Raina blinked and Chass said, “I know people think I don’t care about other people, but I care about you, alright?”
“I know,” said Raina, “I know.”
Chastity imagined she probably figured out for herself what had happened, later on. And she would end up repaying the favor, in time.
(Raina had seen her kill a number of people but she had never seen her feed. Why that was the last thing Chastity still had enough shame about to keep a secret, she couldn’t say, but just the thought of it seemed to disturb some people on a level that even the most extreme of their regular violence didn’t. Maybe Raina would find it more palatable if she saw Chass prepare it like any other meat, knowing it was still sourced more ethically than the kind lots of people around here had moral issues about, instead of tearing it straight off a recently-dead body like a scavenging animal. Maybe she would even like it if she tried it, not knowing what it was at first.)
(Five years they spent together, and there was still so much they never got to do.)
The best thing to come out of both of those incidents, Chastity later decided upon reflection, was that recounting them (with the right details left out, and the right ones included) almost certainly contributed to her walking out of the courtroom about a year later a free woman with some extra cash in her pocket.
Raina, however, had not had any similar experiences, which may have contributed to her not walking out of there a free woman at the end of her portion of the whole trial. But there was, Chass was almost certain, an exchange involved there. She had saved Raina enough times that it was only fair that she go free in Raina’s stead.
Funny how things worked out, she thought. In general.
“…and that’s pretty much it,” said Chastity. In her head she added Can I go now? which was what she would have said if she were being questioned by her older sister or even Sonia.
Here, though, she would have to wait to be informed when and where she could go.
“Nice work on that one,” Linda said in a soft aside once they were together privately. “I wasn’t sure at first about you adding that bit about not blaming them for what they did to you, but I think it helped. Makes it seem less like you’re fishing for sympathy points, but it works to make you seem more like a noble young martyr. Not too bitter, not too sweet.”
“Thanks,” said Chastity, not bothering to mention that that really was how she felt. She supposed she maybe should feel a little more anger or resentment towards Sisi and Célie, but she really didn’t. At this point, it hardly seemed worth it to vent any sort of feelings like those about them, anyway. What really mattered was protecting herself and protecting Raina, and she thought she’d done both well enough. Of course, she would have to wait and see for sure. She didn’t know what Raina was saying when they had her on the stand. But between her assigned attorney Linda’s help and her comments on how well Chass was doing, she felt pretty good about how this might turn out, at least for now.
The person she’d really like to blame, if anyone, was Sonia, and she was effectively out of the equation since she was dead. No one knew if it was from succumbing to injuries or some kind of suicide – they were understandably keeping the details very secret at the moment – but Chastity was privately suspecting the latter. The real question was why she did it. Did she know she wasn’t getting herself out of this one and just decided to give up? Did she really think the end was coming and was still trying to enact her plan to escape it? Was she doing the only thing she could to protect her followers?
Chastity wouldn’t have assumed the last one was true, but it was possible. Anything was. Sonia’s testimony would have surely damned most of them no matter how non-specific she tried to be, and she imagined the judge and jury would have an awfully hard time trying to square whatever she said against the various claims of her followers and would just convict them all to be sure. By taking herself out of it, Sonia would be letting them speak purely for themselves, and therefore have a fighting chance.
Just get it over with now. Chastity understood that.
Factoring in the other possible reasons made even more sense as to why she’d been so quick to do it. If she had been in the same position, she would also have taken any out she could give herself over dying in prison or in whatever fiery apocalypse the woman had been imagining.
She’d never know exactly why, but she knew the question would probably keep her and everyone else who survived this up at night for years to come. So would the question of how. Cyanide pill? Pain medicine overdose? Taking a bullet, just like Chass did?
That would likely have required a bit more expert calculation, which even Sonia wouldn’t be able to do on the spot like that. If Chastity had been able to survive her injury, who knew what a person could live through?
Well, maybe not everyone. She swore that one night after checking her vitals and whatever else they did to make sure she was doing okay, her nurse had leaned in conspiratorially and whispered to her you really shouldn’t have survived that, you know.
“What?” she’d whispered back, weakly, tired, maybe a little confused from the drugs.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in this place, and no one who’s ever had something like what happened to you happen to them has lived. That much trauma to the – it isn’t possible.” She started away, then looked back. “Or so I used to think.”
“So I’m pretty special, then?” Chastity tried to lighten the mood, but the nurse remained somber.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but you’re certainly resilient. Or very lucky. Or something.” She turned away again. “Good night.”
Then she hurried off and Chastity did not see her again that night. She might have been crossing herself as she went, but that could have been something she always did. A lot of religious people worked here.
Chastity wrote the encounter off as another odd little thing she could have been dreaming. Or hallucinating, for all she knew. She’d been on a lot of pain meds.
Whatever the hell was going on, Chass thought she was pretty resilient. Her whole family was. It was hereditary. It had to be to survive under their circumstances, all throughout their history. At some point, she might accept that whatever they were made of, it was something not quite normal. It was why they were still here.
The world was a strange place. The universe was a strange place. She’d come to accept that, too, over the years. She’d never fully understand exactly how it worked. But sometimes, it worked for her. And whenever that happened, she really couldn’t question it.