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She runs. It’s an ignoble response, one that consigns her beloved to a tragic fate, but in the moment, all Cinders can see is the blood. It sends as fire through her legs, through her lungs, as she sprints. She doesn’t think, doesn’t have time to, not when the guns are a blazing and she sees her love’s family gunned down, one after another.
Bullets fly, and she dodges between them like a dancer, with the grace of a bird, until she doesn’t. She doesn’t realize she’s falling until her face is in the dirt, doesn’t realize she’s been shot till she touches the pool of red growing around her chest. She laughs as she touches her hand to the wound, a faint buzzing in her head, and there’s something wrong with the way it sounds. She laughs more, to try to make it clear, and she laughs until she sees the blurry outline of a woman. Or maybe there’s two of her, Cinders can’t tell. Not with the hot tears in her eyes and the white hot pain.
A soldier, Cinders presumes from the way she carries herself, and she asks, “you’ve come to finish me off?”
At least, she thinks that’s what she says. Her words come out slurred, and that sends a new wave of panic through her. The woman shakes her head and kneels, reaching Cinders’s level. There’s something enchanting about her, even as Cinders chokes for breath through failing lungs. One of her eyes is sealed shut, beneath a half healed cut, and the other shines bright with such intense... intense.... Cinders can’t name it. Her head’s spinning. She wants Rose, she wants her home back, she wants the world to make sense again.
“Cinders,” she says, and Cinders watches the way her red hair drifts into and out of her face. Is there a wind? Yes, there’s a strong one. How didn’t she notice? She wants to reach out. “You don’t need to die here.”
Cinders coughs up blood, disgusted at the way it looks on the dirt beneath her, and shakes her head. No, she’s pretty sure she’s dying, she wants to say. She can’t think of how to put that idea into words.
“I can save you.”
“Shot,” she manages, almost managing to push herself up from the ground for a moment, only to collapse into a heap.
“I can save you,” she repeats, and now Cinders is thinking she’s delusional. She’s heard of people seeing shit that ain’t there when they’re low on blood, and she knows where the bullet hit. She can feel it in her now, makes her want to throw up. “I can give you a home that will never be torn away. A family that won’t die. Eternity.”
She’s sure of it. There’s no way an offer that good’s true. But she drags her way into the woman’s arms anyway, lets her stroke Cinders’s hair gently as the dark pulls her away, and the cold hands against her cheek are a strange reassurance. That this isn’t real, that she’ll be gone. The whispers of, “I’ll love you,” in her ear remind her of her long dead mother, and that’s how she knows it’s a lie. The embrace of black pulls her away, and she knows it’ll be the last time until—
—until it’s not.
Until she hears the sound of something mechanical whirring in the distance. She’s sure it’s a weapon of war, come to break her again, and she’s ready to run as she comes to, bolting upwards. Her scream is pained, with loss, with rage, with fear, and it barely makes it past her lips as her tongue touches gag.
Realizes the sounds not coming from far away, but inside her. Beneath her skin. The sound is wrong. Uncanny. Human bodies aren’t meant to tick like that, like a bomb about to blow, but isn’t that what she’s been this entire time? A trick? A tool, to lure her love into a sense of safety? No. She swears, their love won’t be for naught.
She reaches up and tears the gag out from between her teeth. She’s not tied down, not bound to this operating table she finds herself on, but there are marks on her wrist that suggest there were once. This isn’t the King’s labs, though, she’s not been taken by them. The woman sits leaning against the end of a table, rolling a gear between her fingers and so caught in thought that it almost makes Cinders laugh. Just like her mother would get, and she plays with that gear like she’s Rose checking her guns a thousand times. Then a sob catches in her throat as the memories come rushing back. All those she loves, dragged away from her for unspeakable fates.
“You’re awake,” the woman observes. Cinders nods mutely, noticing her wedding ring sat on a small plate next to her. She swings her legs to the side of the table as if she’s about to stand up, but the vertigo catches her before she can. “You’ll be dizzy for a while yet. Your brain is recalibrating, and the sense of balance isn’t high on its list of priorities.”
“Who?” she tries, but she’s not sure she makes herself heard. Her words feel like mush.
“Who am I?” the woman guesses, and Cinders nods. “Carmilla, that’s Doctor to you. The scientist that brought you back to life, forever.”
Cinders head spins. She knows the name, there was a kid on her home planet that didn’t. Rose was fascinated by the tales, and Cinders had told them to her over long distance calls when the nightmares got too much. Rose liked the bloody bits, always was so singleminded, but Cinders‘s been sucker for the romance of it all. The woman who’d drop from the sky, take you by the hand, and show you the stars. Everything matches up, even her strange attire, but it’s impossible. She laughs, like it’s nothing funny, and Doctor Carmilla smiles at her. Two rows of sharp teeth. Cinders shakes her head.
“Bullshit,” she says, because it’s the only thing she can think to say. Doctor Carmilla shrugs, and, without hesitating, grabs a scalpel and slits her own throat. No blood drips from the wound and the skin seals shut. “That’s impossible. Got to be a trick.”
“How about you try it on yourself, then?” she suggests. “Since now we’re both equally immortal.”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to stab myself for you.”
“Have it your way. Catch.”
Doctor Carmilla throws the scalpel with a practiced grace. Cinders’s eyes widen, and she raises her hand to catch it, unthinking. Not enough time to think, not when it’s right in front of her face, and it makes its home inside her palm. She sees the look on Doctor Carmilla’s face right before the pain hits, and she’s sure this is what she meant when she threw it all along. There’s something cold in her, something more than her long dead body. Something calculating. Cinders stares at the knife where it’s imbedded in her skin, feels where it’s cutting through her. She stays still, not screaming until it falls out, the angle too awkward and the blade too short for it to stick. It got further into her than it should’ve, and she chalks that up to the alien strength behind the throw. The pain feels wrong, and she chalks that up to nerve damage.
She puts her other hand to the hole, trying to staunch the bleeding out of habit, but there’s not enough blood. It doesn’t make any sense, and she swears at the sight, calling on an old god she knows will die with her. Her skin is closing back around the wound. She reaches for the tatters of her wedding dress only to realize she’s wearing a thin hospital gown instead. She pulls that away instead, reaching to touch where the bullet hit. There’s a messy scar there, but it’s not the rough circle of a bullet. It’s thin lines, precisely cut, snaking across her chest. The clicks in her chest that are too mechanical for her heart make sense now. Something about where the bullet landed or how it landed had fucked up her rib cage. Her heart, wild as it was, is now contained.
“Forever,” she repeats, the word only now starting to sink in.
“As far as I know. Some evidence suggests there might be certain circumstances but... well. I’m still here.” She stretches, leaning back and pulling her arms behind her head. Someone so beautiful shouldn’t be real, Cinders thinks. She’s cut right out of a fairytale. Right down to the riddles. “I suppose you’ll be wanting your ring back? The rest was unsalvageable.”
Cinders nods, grateful for the distraction. And by distraction, she means anchor. Rose... whatever this strange resurrection means for her, she can worry about that later.
Doctor Carmilla stands up, picking up the ring with surprisingly thoughtful care. She moves closer, and the ground seems to shake with her movement. It takes a moment for Cinders to realize that they’ve been moving the entire time. She looks for a window to gauge their ship’s speed but finds none. Just unending waves of scientific equipment and... a bed. Surrounded by ancient books Cinders can’t even imagine beginning to learn how to read. At least, she assumes they’re books.
Doctor Carmilla places one hand on Cinders’s shoulder, and she offers the ring in her other one, a soft smile on her lips. Piercings and tattoos. Somehow, Cinders didn’t expect that. She definitely didn’t expect the gentle chill of her breath as she speaks again, this time so close.
“We’ll make them pay for what they’ve done to you, my love.”
Cinders takes the offered ring and slips it back onto her finger, tears rising in her eyes. She lets them out, a conscious choice, and moves to stand, stumbling into Doctor Carmilla’s arms. Stumbling into a hug. She melts like ice on her home’s summer days, that is to say, almost instantly. The hands around her feel so good, so reassuring, and when Doctor Carmilla plants a kiss on her forehead, she feels something stirring in her that’s been dead for years now. She feels the vulnerability of a child in her mother’s arms. It’s not the same, she knows, this is not the woman who raised her. Her mother slipped away in the night, caught by a fever Cinders is just sure was engineered. But Doctor Carmilla is torn from the pages of the stories her mother used to tell, and her embrace is strong.
“Don’t let go,” Cinders begs between sobs when it seems like Doctor Carmilla might be about to pull away. She’s humiliated by her own weakness, ashamed to imagine what the punishment might be if she’s seen like this, but she can’t seem to stop. She can’t seem to want to stop. This is the second time her world’s come tumbling down around her, the second time what she loves has been ripped away from her with gunfire and blood, and she’s not ready to understand that. All she knows is that this Doctor is here that despite everything, she’s real.
“Not in a million years,” she promises, and if it was anyone else, Cinders would call bullshit. She’d say the world’s cruel and quick to separate people. But there’s a determination to the way this Doctor says it, a sort of relentlessness that makes Cinders think she’d burn down the whole galaxy for her. And it’s terrifying and reassuring and home all at once.