Chapter Text
Chastity blinked herself awake slowly, allowing her surroundings to come into focus, but still squinting into harsh white light. Once she was able to fully open her eyes, she knew that she was finally out of whatever half-asleep, half-dreaming, possibly half-dead state she’d been in. She was now definitively awake and, most importantly, alive.
That was a relief, and she also knew that she definitely was in a hospital. Already her last dream-vision was slipping from her mind, but she was dimly aware that it might have simply been her mind’s interpretation of what she could see of the room when she was awake, however briefly.
She tried to sit up further in bed and felt a wave of fresh pain wash over her head, momentarily clouding her vision. She sat back.
She realized that she’d never been in a hospital before as a long-term patient. She’d been to the hospital where her aunt Constance worked, and they’d all been treated by her at some point, but she’d never been on the other side of the hospital bed. (There had probably been a few times in her life, and especially the past few years, where she really should have gone to a hospital, but had made do with the resources available to her, and it had all worked out fine.)
She didn’t know what to do. There were no doctors or nurses in the room with her. She thought there was something you could use on the side of the bed to call someone, but even turning her head to look for it was still too much effort.
She’d just have to wait it out, then, until someone came in. As long as she didn’t fall back to sleep. That would be too risky.
The door swung open, almost startling her, and a nurse walked in looking down at a clipboard. When she looked up she stopped in her tracks.
“Oh,” said the nurse. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” said Chastity. “I am. How long was I out?”
“Let’s see,” said the nurse, looking at her notes again. “You came in – with the rest of your – the other people – on Saturday morning. Today’s Monday, so…”
Chastity didn’t take long to put this together. “I was out for two whole days?”
“Well, really, one full day, plus most of Saturday, and a few hours of today. But yes, almost two days straight.”
Chastity didn’t press this issue. “What time is it?”
“About ten in the morning…”
“Oh. Good.” Still earlier than she usually got up on her own.
“I’d better go get the doctor,” the nurse said, glancing behind her. “She’s—they’ve got a lot of questions for you.”
Well. That shouldn’t have been surprising. Hopefully they’d go easy on her, since she was still in the hospital and all, and didn’t really feel like she’d be getting out too soon. And she had plenty of questions of her own.
“Alright,” said Chass, and the nurse walked quickly out of the room, glancing back once at Chastity, who probably looked a bit confused.
The nurse was back a few minutes later with an imposing-looking woman in tow, who Chass assumed was her doctor. They conversed briefly and quietly just outside of the room, and then the doctor was coming in alone and shutting the door behind her and sitting down in a chair at the foot of the bed.
“So,” the doctor said. “We should get ourselves acquainted first. I’m Dr. Maria Caldwell, and you are…?”
“Chastity Sawyer,” she said (and Temperance’s voice flashed into her mind just then, whispering harshly don’t give out your full name just like that chass what are you DOING and she whispered back in her head it’s not like I gave her my middle name or anything because it’s the full true name that gives people power over you isn’t that what you said)
“I imagine you’re wondering what just happened.”
“Yeah…” Actually, she was pretty sure of what had happened, but she would appreciate some clarifying details.
“What do you know about it?”
Not an expected question, but it didn’t throw her for a loop too badly. And now was a chance to get her story straight. “Well. I woke up on—Saturday morning. The police were there. And the reason the police were there is because I’d called them the night before. And the reason I’d called them is because Sonia – that’s Sonia Simmons – was gonna make us all kill ourselves the following day.”
“Right,” said Dr. Caldwell. She was making direct eye contact and looking very serious. Chastity averted her eyes and then immediately became aware of it. Wasn’t that supposed to be a sign someone was lying? Because she actually wasn’t, at least not with this part of the story.
“So then everyone was running around and grabbing things and running outside,” Chastity went on quickly. “And I ran outside too, and I saw—well, my friend was in a standoff and I thought she was about to get shot, see, so I jumped in front of her to protect her. Then I got shot. In the head. Right?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Caldwell. “You did.”
“And then…I think I got hit a couple more times before I passed out. I was in and out for a while and then I woke up here. And that’s all I remember.” She was telling the truth, she really was.
“Well,” said Dr. Caldwell, “you got all of that right. Although I expect you’ll be expanding on it a bit more in court.”
“In court?” Already?
“Not yet, of course – it’ll be a while before you’re healed enough to testify – but don’t worry about that right now.” Not great advice. Now she’d be worrying about it for the entirety of the foreseeable future. She wished Dr. Caldwell hadn’t brought it up at all, even though she knew it was probably coming, just so she could recover in some amount of peace. “What you probably want to know about is what happened to your…friends.”
“They weren’t all my friends,” Chastity said, maybe a little too quickly.
“I understand,” said the doctor. “Now, some more people are coming in to talk to you, but for now, I can tell you that Sonia Simmons is dead.”
Chastity ended up being questioned by a succession of police officers, and a few people she thought might have been journalists, and while she did her best to answer them as honestly as she could, she was processing the information they’d told her for most of it. Sonia Simmons was indeed dead – she’d been injured in the raid much like Chastity herself and plenty of other people, but they’d found her dead in the hospital only the previous morning. It seemed like she’d either succumbed to her wounds or intentionally overdosed herself with medication, but Chass privately thought it was entirely likely she’d kept an extra cyanide pill or something like it on her for just this kind of occasion.
This was good news, actually, and not just because she didn’t much care for Sonia. If she was dead, she wouldn’t be able to testify in court, and therefore could say nothing that might help out her followers, but she also wouldn’t be able to say anything to implicate them, either. Any fears about what she might do or say, even accidentally, that would spell doom for Chass or Raina or any of their friends were now rendered null and void. And if she had committed suicide, then it might have just been her last attempt to enter the rapture she’d predicted by herself, but she might have – just might have – realized what this meant for her followers and done it to protect them. Despite everything else she’d done, she’d always been very determined that they not get caught. In a situation where there was nothing left for her to do, Chastity wouldn’t put it past her.
In addition, a number of other people had been killed on Saturday morning, which Chass really didn’t want to hear about, but she was allowed to ask if a few specific people were alive. Her first priority was, of course, Rachel Browes.
Raina had made it, which was a massive relief, even if she was still in police custody. It seemed that’s where most people who weren’t injured were, and in fact Chastity thought she’d probably be getting arrested as soon as she was recovered enough. But again, they could worry about the trial later. Chastity tried not to think about Raina alone in a jail cell. She wondered if Raina would call her mother, who was the only living relative she had left according to her, even if things were rough between them.
One of the police officers seemed to recognize her immediately after talking to her. “Hey,” he said, “you were the one who called us on Friday night.”
“How’d you know?” she asked.
“I’d know your voice anywhere. I remembered it was a Southern-sounding girl with a bit of a stutter, and I can’t imagine there were too many other people in that place who fit that description.”
She didn’t know what to say to this, so she just smiled weakly. Apparently she’d saved a lot of lives with that phone call, so it was a good thing that she was getting proper credit for it. That might help her out when she was on the stand.
That same cop also asked her if she remembered any details about the guy who was threatening Raina when Chass jumped in front of her, who was also the one who’d landed her in the hospital in the first place. She gave a halting and uncertain physical description; she was never very good at remembering faces, and all middle-aged white men in police helmets and those mirrored sunglasses looked the same to her anyway. And she also ran through her account of what exactly happened between her and him and Raina again, even though she’d said the same things plenty of times before and probably to the same people.
The guy nodded like she was confirming something, though. “Yep. That checks out with the account she gave, and the one he gave. What did he hit you with after you got shot?”
After she got shot, apparently, not after he shot her, but at least he got the first part right. She hadn’t even registered the fact that the same man who’d shot her was also hitting her some more, much less with something, at the time. She thought back.
“Well,” she said. “I really couldn’t see anything clearly at that point. But before I went outside, I remember I grabbed something – just to defend myself with, if I had to – and it was some kind of big knife? Just the first thing I grabbed. And I had it when I was protecting Raina, but after I got shot I think I dropped it. So that might’ve been it.”
She hadn’t even gotten a chance to use that thing, and now she realized she’d probably gotten her skull half-crushed with it. What had even been the point of grabbing that?
The policeman was nodding seriously and writing something down. “Mm-hmm. Your friend Rachel said that was it, too, but he said he didn’t hit you with anything, and I must confess, we were inclined to believe him.”
Of course you were, Chass thought, but said nothing.
“But your injuries are consistent with that description, and they did find a big knife, a full-on machete at that, at the scene of the—at your scene of the crime, so you’re probably right.”
Yeah, probably.
“Listen,” he said, leaning forward and almost whispering. “I don’t want to say anything, but we’re definitely keeping your bit of testimony here in mind. You could be looking at a nice little settlement for yourself once we prove that happened in court.”
“Alright,” said Chass. That actually was good to know.
“Anything else you’d like to know?”
“Um,” she said. “Did Raina—Rachel Browes—did she say anything else? About me?”
The man looked at her thoughtfully. “She said that she wasn’t planning on doing anything with that knife, and that you weren’t planning on anything but defending her when you stepped in. Also, that you never left her even when you were already hurt, except at that point she was trying just as hard to protect you as you’d been for her. Now, I don’t know about that first part about the knife, but I’d believe the rest. Especially now.”
“Thanks,” said Chastity.
At least this guy was on her side. But she wanted to see Raina now more than ever.
After what felt like several hours of all this, with a few breaks to allow her to eat something, she was starting to feel like she might pass out again. Dr. Caldwell was kind enough to shoo everyone out on the grounds that her patient had literally just woken up and was going to need more time to recover, and also to offer her a dose of painkillers on the grounds that she looked like she needed it.
Chastity was grateful for the opportunity to get some sleep without having to try not to think about anything. Between Raina’s whereabouts, her upcoming trial, and the splitting headaches she was intermittently getting when the pain wasn’t dulled to a low throb, she didn’t think she’d be able to fall asleep otherwise.
There had been a lot to process that day. As she slipped away again more thoughts came to her, in both Temperance’s voice and her own:
they noticed you stuttering they’re gonna think you’re lying
no they won’t they think it’s just how I talk
have you noticed it getting worse since you woke up? better hope your brain didn’t get too screwed up—
what, more than it already is?
how many people do you think you saved? more than you’ve ever killed? that should balance things out a little for whoever’s keeping track
oh god if I finally end up on the news and it’s for an act of heroism—
Chass might have slept through another full day or two or more – she wouldn’t have known. She didn’t bother asking. It didn’t matter. Right now she was supposed to concentrate on physically recovering, and she was perfectly happy to have to do nothing but that.
Doctors and nurses came in and out, to bring her food and medicine and occasionally to change her bandages. She really had been injured quite badly.
“We had to replace a good piece of your skull,” said Dr. Caldwell. Chastity didn’t say anything in response to that, just nodding vaguely. Sure. That sounded right. “So try not to touch that area at all until it heals.”
Chastity nodded again, thinking dimly of all the times she’d been told not to scratch, pick at, or otherwise mess with a minor injury she’d gotten and had promptly ignored those instructions to give in to her subconscious urges. Patience could only admonish her so many times, although she did so much less urgently than when she caught Temperance idly but deliberately dragging a blade down her own skin.
Even if she left it alone, though, she was probably going to have a hell of a scar on the right side of her head after this, and she didn’t know if she’d be able to cover it with her hair when that grew back in. (If it did.) Right now she had kind of a cool half-shaved, half-shoulder-length thing going on, or she would if her head wasn’t still heavily wrapped in bandages.
Which was, you know. Fine. How she looked was the least of her problems right now.
(oh god chass what are you going to DO)
She asked for another dose of the medicine they were giving her, so she could delay thinking about any of said problems for a little while longer. And because her head really was killing her.
A few days later, Chastity met her lawyer.
She knew that, technically, she was under arrest right now, and once she recovered, she’d be transferred from her hospital room to a jail cell, like Raina currently was. And the day that would happen was coming up soon.
If Sonia were still around, she’d probably be on trial by now, but fortunately, she wasn’t. Despite everything else, Chass would have to silently thank her every time she remembered that. Who knew what Sonia would have said about her, especially if she found out that Chastity was the one who called the police on her?
Raina was also probably on the stand right now. Chass just hoped she’d be okay, and wouldn’t completely break under the pressure. She wasn’t worried about Raina giving anything away that would incriminate her or any of their friends, though. She’d withstood much worse and kept quiet. It was just that the questioning and the stress of having her sentence hanging in the balance might end up being too much for her and she could get herself committed to a mental institution instead of prison.
Which might actually be worse. Chastity had heard plenty about “asylums” and what they did to people who didn’t act quite right. It was the kind of thing Patience would warn her younger sisters about when they were out in public, and it didn’t always sound like one of her less believable threats meant to keep them in line. There was a real concern there under her usual harsh sternness – watch yourselves, girls, you don’t want anybody to think there’s something wrong with you.
The warnings were usually more directed at Temperance and Lacey, though, especially Temperance, who was always more prone to straying even back when they were kids. Charity was the one Patience kept close by her side at all times with a death grip on her little arm. Despite how much she resented having to be in charge of them, Patience had always been afraid of losing her sisters in any way.
(And she and Chastity were the “normal” ones, or at least the ones who could best keep up the façade of normalcy, so they had to be responsible for the other two. Patience was more concerned about Chass getting in trouble with the law as she got older, and now…)
Chastity had already been offered the customary one phone call, and declined it. It had only taken a few seconds of careful consideration – there was exactly one person she could call and reasonably expect an answer from, and she didn’t really want to imagine what her reaction might be to the news of her sister’s current predicament. She decided that she’d save that conversation for when all this was over, however it turned out.
Hey, Patience, guess what? I’m in prison…no, not for that. It’s kind of a funny story, really…okay, but just remember, there’s nothing either of us can do about it now. And there’s nothing you can do to me, either, by the time I get out of here you might not even be—
Yeah.
Hey, Patience, guess what? I just got out of court—yeah, I was on trial, but I won. Sort of. What happened? Well, it’s a long story, but…
How the hell would she explain it? The former option might be preferable to having to tell Patience everything.
All this was on her mind when Linda walked in.
“Good afternoon, Miss Sawyer, I’m Linda Allen and I’ll be your defense attorney in the coming weeks. Now, before your portion of the trial commences, I’m going to ask you a few questions. Can you handle that right now?”
“Um,” said Chastity, who hadn’t even realized that it was the afternoon until then. “Yeah.”
Chass answered the first few easily enough – it was mostly more of the same after what her doctors and the police had asked her, including her recounting of the events that led up to her hospitalization – and was beginning to think that Linda, brisk and professionally efficient as she was, wouldn’t be a bad person at all to have on her side in the trial. Even if she probably wasn’t exactly doing this by choice.
“Good, good. Now—” Linda put down her notebook and pen and leaned forward. “Miss Sawyer…”
“Oh, call me Chastity,” she said pleasantly. “Or Chass, if you want.”
Linda flicked a smile at her. “Chastity, I have to ask you this privately. In your years working for Ms. Simmons…or living under her control, to describe it more accurately…did you ever kill anybody? By choice, or under coercion?”
Chastity stared at her. “This is off the record?”
“Yes,” said Linda, and to prove it she put her notebook and pen away in her bag. “You could say that. I don’t need to make any official note of this, and I’m going to help try and get you off as easily as possible regardless. But it will help me to get an answer.”
Chastity stared at her some more.
“The room isn’t bugged, you know.”
“I know.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
Chastity looked her in the eye. “No.”
“Were you forced to kill anyone?”
“Well—”
“Let me rephrase that. Were you assigned to kill anyone?”
“Yes, but I didn’t…”
“You never killed anyone yourself, then. Other people did.”
“Yes.”
Linda nodded slowly. “I’ll believe you.”
There were a few more questions before Linda left. Chastity answered them all easily, feeling quite a bit calmer and more clear-headed now. It was like whatever had been causing her stress and making her unable to think straight had left her, and now she knew exactly what to say and do. She’d felt this way sometimes in school, like when she’d stay up all night studying for a test and still not feel like she knew what she was doing, but then when she had to take it on the day of, she’d suddenly snap into a state of pure and focused calm and realize that she did know the answers after all. What had she been so worried about?
On her way out, Linda paused at the door. “I think you’ll do alright in court. You’re in good hands, Chastity.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you then, Ms. Allen.”
“Oh, please,” said Linda, returning a genuine smile. “Call me Linda.”
Chastity relaxed back into her bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable resting place, especially when you’d been essentially confined to it for several days straight, but it was most likely a lot better than the next place she’d be spending a lot of time in after she got out of here. Better enjoy what small comforts she had while they lasted.
Like her fellow cultists had been doing on their last night.
(“Why don’t you sleep somewhere more comfortable, Chass?”
“I gotta sleep here, it’s—for reasons. But you don’t have to…”
“I want to be with you.”
“Alright, but I can’t go anywhere else. So…”
“I don’t care.”)
She sighed. Wherever Raina was, she hoped that she’d have the same kind of clarity Chass was coming into just before she went on trial. Chastity was good at thinking on her feet, and Raina was good at planning things out, but it didn’t work for either of them if they were under too much pressure. You had to be able to put yourself in the right mindset.
Chass tried to psychically send Raina some positive energy – some good vibes, if you would – to encourage her, but it just made her head hurt. Or maybe she was in need of some of that pain medication again.
You can’t take too much of this, Dr. Caldwell had warned her. At some point we’ll have to take you off it so you don’t become dependent on it. That can happen.
That was probably true. And it definitely wouldn’t be good if she was going up in court.
At the very least, she hoped Raina had a good lawyer. Chastity trusted Linda. Something about the way she said I’ll believe you gave her the sense that whether or not Linda actually believed her, she was going to take Chass’ story as fact for the purposes of her case.
It was a pragmatic decision, probably. She had to try her hardest to get her client as close to a not-guilty verdict as possible. It was her job. Chastity respected that. And appreciated it. She had a feeling they’d be able to work together pretty nicely, which was a relief. She couldn’t imagine how much harder this would be if she got a lawyer she couldn’t work with.
The American legal justice system might be fucked, but if she could game it to her advantage, then she’d have achieved the true American dream. As well as doubtlessly making her family proud of her. If there was one thing they were good at, it was getting themselves (and each other) out of trouble.
(Temperance whispered in her head what are you gonna do when you get hungry? and Chastity answered with something to the effect of that she’d cross that bridge when she came to it, and she’d survived for long enough periods of time without any human flesh, and Temperance asked what do you think is our limit?
Chastity said I’ll be home before I reach it, and before Temperance could ask her how she was so sure she added, or you’ll just have to come down here and break me out of jail, won’t you? because she knew they’d do that for each other. they both did)
Chastity was not a religious woman, but she did believe in some kind of cosmic order, so she said a quick prayer of some sort; just asking the universe to put in a good word for Raina. Not even for herself, she could handle that on her own.
Wasn’t there an astrological sign that dealt with justice? Libra, the scales. But it wasn’t Libra season right now – anyone whose birthday was today would be a Virgo. It had been Virgo season since the apocalypse announcement, and she had no idea what that meant.
Virgo was the maiden. Or the virgin. Which you could, if you reached, connect to the concept of her name that so many of her peers thought was so funny.
She herself was a Scorpio according to the traditional positions, but she couldn’t help thinking this was a good sign for things working out in her favor.
oh come on, said her twin sister in her head.
hey I know you don’t believe in that astrology stuff but I also know you like playing with that deck of cards you found in those people’s car that one time—
that’s not the same—
and one of them has your name on it, doesn’t it, and you feel the same way when you randomly pull one out and it’s yours?
Alright, sure, maybe it was a bit ridiculous, expecting the stars and the names people assigned to them a long time ago to mean anything in her own personal future. But hey, she really needed to feel good about something right now.
And she did. She’d made it this far, hadn’t she? Survived this long? Her plan had been risky as hell, and things had seemingly gone wrong at first, but it had worked. She was calm and collected and much more confident about future prospects than she’d been since she first woke up here. Of course, by tomorrow that could change, but she was just going to bask in this energy for a while. Maybe the universe really was looking out for her.
Maybe, she thought, just maybe, everything was going to be okay.
Should we tell her? they murmured outside her door at night. Should we let her know how close she came to dying? That we were this close to putting her in the morgue when she took another breath?
Not close, she basically was dead—
“Hey,” she said aloud. “Are y’all talking about me?”
They went silent, and moved away from the door.
“That’s right,” she muttered. “Just try and kill one of us. Right, Temperance?”
Right on, she said, and they both giggled like they were kids again.