Chapter Text
The waiting is the worst part. While Rachel’s eyes are growing back, she is bound to the bed; she refuses to stumble around the house, refuses to make her helplessness visible. So that means all she can do is sit in this bed, breathe in through her nose – as if that helps – and wait for them to come to her.
Helena, at least, remembers to bring food; she comes with teapots, sits at the foot of Rachel’s bed and pours her tea and tells her secrets Rachel only half-understands. Coming back to your den and smelling musk and not even minding, because it’s warm. A baby bird thrashing on the ground. Stepping on the wings of a baby bird thrashing on the ground. Putting the baby bird back together. Then a phrase Rachel understands as sorry.
You always are, Rachel will say, because she always does. Say that. She always does. Helena is familiar, by now; they dance like ornate clockwork figures, in the same circles. Helena, Rachel understands.
But Sarah—
Sarah only comes by accident. Awful. Helena smells like her sometimes, awful, they start to smell like each other after a while, awful, Sarah only comes into Rachel’s room by accident. She always lingers guilty in the door. Rachel tells her to come in, every single time.
She can keep Sarah there, if she tells Sarah stories. She should have realized that earlier – Sarah likes stories, Sarah listens to stories with a tentative and hopeful narcissism. She always looks for herself in them. Rachel can imagine the exact expression on her face, when she listens: the almost-frown, the fan of her dark hair over Rachel’s white bed. Rachel wants her. Rachel wants her. Awful, awful, awful.
Sarah looks for herself and Rachel gives her Rachel, before that was her name. See, here, see the girl, young and sharp and learning about wanting like she was the first to ever want anything. Here she is, on the island. Here she is, beloved, golden child, glass darling.
Today (tonight?) Sarah has laid down on Rachel’s bed, brazen, her head close to Rachel’s leg. Obligingly Rachel is running her fingers through Sarah’s hair. Rachel wants—
Awful.
“And when the dancing was over,” she murmurs, “they were both gone.”
Sarah doesn’t say anything. Asleep? No, she doesn’t smell like sleep. She’s thinking. “She never found them again?” she says.
“No,” Rachel says. “She looked, but they were gone.” Dead, actually, but she is curious to see if she can get Sarah to forget about death. If Sarah is here long enough. Sarah is sixteen different experiments wrapped in a coil of organs that Rachel wants—
Awful.
She hears the noise of Sarah shifting on the bed; Sarah can’t get up, because Rachel has a coil of her hair wrapped around her fingertips. Like a leash. Like the prelude to a leash. If Rachel asked the house for a leash, it would probably give her one. She hasn’t tried it yet, she shouldn’t be thinking about this, awful.
“I feel like I owe you something,” Sarah says. “For the stories. Debts, yeah? I just—” she sighs. “Don’t remember anything.”
“Really?” Rachel says. “Nothing?” She tightens the choke of Sarah’s hair around her finger until her blood pulses and aches in her fingertip. She could bite her fingertip, drink her own blood; it wouldn’t fix anything. Sarah’s blood would fix all sorts of things, but that is a thought she is trying to avoid.
“Pieces,” Sarah says vaguely. A small repeated rustle. She’s twitching, somehow, Rachel wants (awful). She wants (awful) to take Sarah apart like a clockwork doll and catch all the cricket-twitches from inside of her and eat them and then put Sarah back together and have Sarah thank Rachel for making her still.
Awful awful awful awful awful.
“Remember when my daughter learned to walk,” Sarah says. “I think. I was—” and Helena steps through the door. She smells like wet fur and the blood that’s soaking it; she smells like earth and piss and picea. She doesn’t even say anything. She just jumps onto the bed and curls up between Rachel and Sarah, like she has any right to be there.
“Hello,” she says.
“Helena,” Rachel says, and she hears the way her own voice sounds exhausted. It never used to before. Before, it never used to sound like anything at all.
“Hey,” Sarah says, and Rachel hears rustling. Awful awful awful that she can’t see it, that they could be doing anything on her bed and she wouldn’t know. In the hot dark space behind her eyelids Helena pulls out a knife and presses it to Sarah’s throat and Sarah lets her – even though Rachel knows this is unrealistic. She would smell it, for one thing. The blood. She would smell it.
She tugs on Sarah’s hair, listens to Sarah’s almost unnoticeable gasp. There. Hers. Rachel’s. If she ignores the sound of Helena growling-giggling to herself, it’s like Helena isn’t even there. Like Sarah is finally completely hers – oh. Wait. Awful.
“What are you doing,” Helena says, and Rachel hears in the curve of her consonants: and why wasn’t I there, what about me, love me, choose me, want me. Awful. Terrible. Miserable animal. It’s not that Rachel wants to rip her apart again; it’s not that it would be satisfying, the gore, the look of surprised terror on Helena’s face, the way she slumps to the ground every time – in stages, like falling down a flight of stairs. It’s not that Rachel wants that.
“Stories,” Rachel says. “Nothing that would interest you.”
“I like stories.”
“You got any?” Sarah says, having already forgotten what she was about to give Rachel. Just like Helena, that forgetting. It’s fine. Sarah is too much like Helena now anyways. What’s a little more?
“I have plenty,” Rachel says, coaxing her voice to cruel softness. “If you don’t recall, Helena.”
Helena doesn’t say anything. Rachel imagines the look on her face, and the secondhand pleasure of watching is enough to get her to go back to running her fingers through Sarah’s hair. The coil of Sarah’s hair falls off her finger, and back into the dark well of unseeing. As soon as it leaves her fingertip it’s gone.
“You never told me,” Sarah says. “About before I got here.” She shifts. “Surprised the two of you didn’t bloody kill each other,” she mutters.
“No,” Helena says, voice strangely soft. “No.” More rustling, and Helena’s hot meat-breath paints Rachel’s skin. She has settled next to Rachel’s other hand, and is intently focused on winding a curl of her own hair around Rachel’s fingertip.
“Once upon a time,” Rachel says, “there was a girl, and there was a wolf. I’m sure you know this story already. It’s the oldest story there is.”
“Rachel is the wolf,” Helena says in a whisper that makes no effort to be quiet.
“She’s lying.”
“Christ,” Sarah mutters. “You can both be the bloody wolf if it means you won’t start fighting on this bloody bed.”
“Once in times there were two wolves,” Helena says. “And one of them thought it was a girl. And one of them thought one of them was a girl. But they were both wrong. And then they ate each other but it was okay. The end.”
Silence in the dark. Rachel imagines the way her finger is starting to purple, from the noose of Helena’s hair wrapped tight around it.
“Wow,” Sarah says. “That was shit.”
Helena makes an upset sound – rustling – the bump of her head into Rachel’s knee. “Don’t,” Rachel says, and pushes her head off. As she does the loop of hair around her finger tightens, and pulls uncomfortably on Helena’s scalp, and Helena says the roll of distant thunder, the sound of something enormous coming towards you through the wood, and Sarah says: “will you both – bloody – stop.”
Rachel stops. She doesn’t know what Helena does until she hears the thump of Helena hitting the floor. More rustling from Sarah – Rachel reaches out a hand – Sarah’s hair is gone, so she’s sat up. “Can’t stand it,” Sarah says, voice shaking. “You’re blind but that won’t bloody stop you, will it? I keep thinking—” Rustling, and the smell of her leaves. Leaves Rachel. Sarah leaves Rachel. Where is she? Where is she standing? Where is she looking? Is she looking at Rachel? Is she looking at Rachel? Is she looking at Rachel?
“Her fault,” Helena says from the floor.
“It is not,” Rachel says – realizes that last word was a guttural snarl – wrestles control of her voice again. “My fault.”
“Can’t stand it,” Sarah says, voice smeared with tears and anger. She is so beautiful. The feeling in her. Helena’s feelings roll through like thunderstorms, wild and temporary and completely lacking in intention. Rachel – well. But here is Sarah, who feels things like a hot silver spoon clamped tight between teeth. Between Rachel’s teeth. Awful, the idea of her between Rachel’s teeth.
“Sarah,” Rachel says, voice smoothed back down to gentleness, and she swears she can hear the tilt of the air that means Sarah has turned her head back in Rachel’s direction.
“Sarah,” Helena says, her own voice ugly and blunt and worthless. Worthless, terrible animal – ruining everything – Rachel could have Sarah, by now, it would be easy, if Helena wouldn’t—
“No,” Sarah says, and stumbles backwards, and storms off into the house.
She leaves Rachel and Helena alone in Rachel’s room.
Rachel keeps a roll of bandages under the bed. It can be difficult to find them, in the times when she is blind and lacking in limbs, but she always manages. She is sitting on the floor and binding – clumsily – the gaping-open wound in her belly when the door opens and Sarah is there.
By accident.
“Oh, shit,” Sarah says, and Rachel takes the words and breaks them into pieces, puts some of the pieces in a box marked despairing and some in a box marked tender and some in worried and some in loving and some in guilty.
“Sarah,” she says, but doesn’t understand what her own voice says at all.
“I,” Sarah says, and crosses the room. The house must have made a bath for her; she smells like roses and honey. When she kneels down next to Rachel on the ground, Rachel can hear the steady beat of her heart.
Sarah’s hands move in, steady, and wrap the bandages. Oh, awful. Oh, awful.
“I’m surprised you aren’t with her,” Rachel offers to Sarah’s hungry silence.
“You know she doesn’t talk about you,” Sarah says, voice flat and shoved out between her teeth. “’cept when she apologizes for you. You know she does that?”
Rachel doesn’t answer, which isn’t lying. She reaches down her hand to touch the tight white bind of the bandages, holding the meat of her back inside. Sarah’s knuckles. Awful. “Will you help me stand,” she says.
“What’s it worth,” Sarah mutters, but she stands up. Silence. “I’m holding out my hand,” she says. “I just – just realized you can’t see it, can you.”
Rachel doesn’t take her hand. “What is it worth?” she says.
“I don’t know,” Sarah says. “I never know. I don’t know shit, can you just – tell me.”
“Ask.”
“Do you care about her?” Sarah says. “At all?”
Rachel reaches out a hand – for a moment, only darkness – Sarah’s hand. Sarah pulls Rachel up to standing and Rachel sits back down on the edge of her bed. “Yes,” she says. For a moment, the world is:
- the feeling of blood soaking through the bandage on her stomach
- underneath that, the consistent terrible pain of skin torn open and organs healing
- the itching of her eye sockets
- the fabric underneath her hands
- Sarah
and then Sarah sits next to her on the bed, and the world shrinks some more. It’s a pleasant thought: that outside of Rachel’s bed, nothing exists. The bed its own phenomenally sad, small island. She could be anyone here. She could want things. She could admit that—
“Funny way of showing it,” Sarah says.
“I didn’t tear her stomach open.”
“You’re both…” Sarah says, and then stops. Sighs. More rustling. Rachel gives up: she reaches out a hand, finds Sarah’s leg. Jumping. The hop of kneecap. Under Rachel’s palm it goes still and Rachel could (awful) and it would be so (awful) and Sarah would – anyways, awful.
“Stop twitching,” she says.
“Glad you’re alright,” Sarah says. Boxes: relieved, guilty, loving, scared.
“We always are.”
Silence. “You’re bleeding,” Sarah says, as if she’s surprised. Rachel moves her hand through the dark until she finds Sarah’s hand, and then presses Sarah’s hand to her belly. Her blood soaks through desperate and yearning and hungry, rocking like a dark honest ocean against Sarah’s lifeline. Sarah’s breath hitches and she doesn’t move.
“Can you forgive yourself,” Rachel says, “for all the things you want?”
Sarah’s breath staggers again, an animal in a forest that Rachel could hunt if she was willing to. If she was willing to, she could hunt anything down. She doesn’t move. She feels Sarah’s heartbeat rattle through her body, and she waits for Sarah to tell her the answer.