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The Bride is zoning out again. For the seventeenth time in the past two hours. For the millionth time in the past two weeks. She should be back to normal. Nothing has changed since the last time she was in here, nothing at all except for everything. Everything has changed, because Nina’s not there, and GI Robot doesn’t know why because the Bride hasn’t been able to work up the strength to tell him yet, and she’s zoning out all the time. She can’t bear to think of it, the knife in her stomach, her face in the blood of the pond and her—
No. Not right now.
The Bride forces herself to focus on the staticy ’80’s rock coming her earbuds, or the words on the book in front of her. Teutonic. Will. To. Ribs. Other. Don’t. Homework. Fleischer. She’s been staring at the same page for hours. She’s only a couple pages into the book itself, and she has no idea what, if anything, has happened in it. Were you lying all the time? comes the voice from the radio. Was it just a game to you? But I’m in so deep…
Jesus fucking Christ, she can’t do this anymore. She rips the earbuds from her ears, staring at the words on the book, mind empty and heavy, heavier than anything she’s ever carried.
“Bride?” comes a familiar voice, and the Bride jumps. It’s Phosphorus, leaning against the frame of her door. She looks at him, eyes wide, and says nothing.
“You’ve been in there for hours,” he says. He’s pretending not to care, but she can hear the concern laced in the statement. She just blinks at him. He enters the room, sitting on the edge of her bed. She’s sitting at the head, back against the wall, pillow propped up behind it. “Hell, you’ve been in there for days. I mean, you used to be one of the most social people on this floor— as social as you can get in here— and now…”
“I leave for meals,” she offers weakly, staring at her knees stretched out before her. She suddenly can’t bear that her legs are so far away from the rest of her, and draws her knees to her chest.
“Are you alright?” he asks. She can’t see his face, what it’s doing, but somehow she knows the question is genuine. They’ve known each other too long, been through too much together, for it to be a joke.
“I…” the Bride begins, but falters halfway through her sentence. “Everytime I look at anything I see her face.”
Phosphorus nods. He looks like he wants to offer comfort, but doesn’t know how.
“And… I see her, in that pond, and I see her eyes, and I just can’t.”
Phosphorus nods.
“And I just,” she continues, voice getting higher as she tries to hold back tears. “I don’t even know.” She finally lets herself sob, and feels the tears begin to leave her eyes. Phosphorus scoots himself closer to her, almost touching her as she slides down the bed until she’s curled into a ball around herself.
“Can I—” Phosphorus starts, but hesitates. “Will it… will it hurt you if I touch you?” His hand is hovering over her arm, still almost touching her, but hesitating for her safety.
The Bride shakes her head. She doesn’t burn the same way that humans do. And the radiation can’t hurt her. Phosphorus leans down and wraps an arm around her. The Bride contemplates pulling away, refusing to let anyone get close to her, but she’s crossed that bridge a long time ago. There’s no going back now, and maybe, she thinks, maybe it will help. She leans into the touch and finally, after weeks of holding back everything inside her, begins to cry.
When he feels her shaking, Phosphorus wraps his other arm around her, letting her bury her face in his chest as she sobs, rubbing her back with his hand. “I know,” he whispers, quietly. He does. He knows better than anyone what it feels like. To lose the first person who had made you feel normal. To lose the first person who had really cared about it, and for it to be your fault. The Bride scream-sobs into his chest, arms around his torso, clutching the back of his shirt. He just keeps rubbing her back and telling her that he knows. He’s holding her up, just a little bit, and he suddenly realizes just how light she is. She seems to weigh nothing.
He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but eventually the Bride’s sobs die down and she just rests against him. If her eyes weren’t open, he would think she were asleep, but they are, and she isn’t. She just seems to be… relaxed. Phosphorus doesn’t know if he can ever remember seeing her relaxed. It’s nice. Her breathing has steadied, and her hands are relaxed on his back. He doesn’t know the last time he’s held someone this close without the express intent of killing them. Years. Decades maybe. Not since… well.
The Bride is almost asleep, in the first genuine human embrace of someone not asking something of her quite possibly in her life. He’s warm, just warm enough that it feels like she’s sleeping on a heated floor under a heated blanket. She wonders if he’s controlling his temperature. He must be. Even though she told him it wouldn’t hurt her, she’s seen how much he cares. It doesn’t feel real, that he cares. Is it? She hopes so. But, if it’s real, that means that everything else that happened is real, too. Too many things are real.
And then there are padded footsteps at the door and, given the quiet the Bride and Phosphorus had been in prior, they seem louder than anything. The Bride’s tenses immediately upon hearing them and, instead of what she would think her first instinct would be and jumping up to fight, she buries her head into Phosphorus’s shoulder, clinging to him.
“It’s alright,” he says, looking up across the room, and she softens a little. “It’s just Weasel. Hey Weas.” Phosphorus and Weasel have become closer recently, the Bride’s noticed. She sees Phosphorus throwing sticks and other random objects that he can find for Weasel to catch more often than she thinks Phosphorus would like anyone to know. She hasn’t mentioned it to him at all, as, well, she didn’t really talk to anyone after she got back. It’s because the three of them have gone through such hell together. They’re closer.
That’s why, she thinks, Weasel can tell that she’s upset. He crawls around the room for a bit before climbing onto the bed (the Bride is a bit surprised that the bed can hold the weight of all three of them, but that’s prison beds for you). He curls into a ball behind the Bride’s legs and rests his head on her thigh. Phosphorus scritches behind his ears, and Weasel closes his eyes, content.
And it’s there, on the tiny, less-than-twin-sized maximum security prison cell bed, curled around each other, that all of them, for the first time in months, years, decades feel safe.
Finally safe.