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A crack resounds through the room. Nerissa inhales deeply, the remnants of a pencil now crushed between her hands prickling into her skin. She slumps onto the floor with her eyes closed shut. She has half a mind to grab the revolver from that spot on the bedside table and just shoot.
One shot. Just one shot.
A low growl threatens to escape from the edge of her throat. She rubs the skin above her arms in the hope that it grounds her. She can’t– she won’t grab the gun. Not when Elizabeth is having the happiest time of her life.
Nerissa thinks back to the cherry trees. Pink petals fall over them both like a crown of blossoms, the sun their very own halo of light. She pictures how happy they both were, free from the blood and the murder, free from their crimson legacy, even if just for a moment. For a single sunrise, they were unchained. Elizabeth has changed. So has she. Nerissa feels herself shake.
Her hands find the grip, and the cold of the metal grows into her palms. She feels her mind rip into two. Don’t shoot. Shoot. Just Do it. Who cares? But Liz–
Suddenly, Nerissa finds herself pointing at the carved wooden bird. It is the very representation of change, of what was. It is her. She knowingly carved out part of her own soul, burying it deep within the oak, for a chance at creation. By killing it she would wrest back her soul. By killing it too she rejects herself and what she lives for. Elizabeth.
Nerissa grits her teeth. A finger nearly tugs on the trigger. No, no no–
The door clicks open. Elizabeth sighs quietly.
Nerissa remembers the time from aeons ago, where Elizabeth– no, the Scarlet Governor– taught her how to kill. Hands come to hold her own, and Nerissa feels the shake disappear. It’s just like before. Everything has changed. The stark difference is that there isn’t any red involved. She exhales, letting the gun slip out of her grasp and back into safer hands. Falling limp, Nerissa leans onto Elizabeth, who slowly spins her into a hug.
Live for me. The words come unspoken, sent into the deepest parts of her bones as a soft hum rumbles across. Nerissa nearly sobs. Okay.
Nerissa falls into a sea of memory. She recalls the Governor, the murderous charisma, and the red, all the red. She sees herself changing, from indecisive and innocent to hard-headed and angry. She can’t help but feel she killed her old self by following Elizabeth into the crimson waves. That past Nerissa drowns into the colour and comes out in Scarlet. Red is anger, red is power, red is love. It is a lot of things. Now, she’s changing again. She doesn’t know if she would come out alive a second time.
A light shines down into the abyss, white and blinding. She hears muffled whispers. Elizabeth? She tries to swim out. Elizabeth has always been her guiding light. Her saviour, her love, even back when she was still the Governor. The light is kinder, now. This time, Elizabeth leads her again, not through a path of blood, but through a beautiful garden of blossoms.
Nerissa wakes up in a cold sweat, her head hurting like a thousand hammers were rammed against her head all at once. She can barely see in the dark. A faint beeping sound cuts through the silence, and in a daze Nerissa throws the clock across the room. No, shut up– It shatters into pieces, the glass strewn over the carpet. Nerissa flinches and makes a mental note to clean that up later. The blanket shuffles beside her, the messy mop of red burrowing deeper into the bedsheets. Nerissa realises too late she’s done too much.
“Love..?” Elizabeth mumbles drowsily. She tugs onto Nerissa’s wrist.
Nerissa has never been so compelled to lie down before. Her touch is so soft. She’s never minded the callouses and scars. “Sorry. Got spooked.”
A bleary eye opens halfway, Scarlet shining through the cracks. Nerissa freezes, her mind flying to something else. She goes slack, letting herself be pulled down back to the bedsheets.
“It’s alright,” her sweetheart says, nuzzling into her neck. “I’m here. I’m with you.”
Nerissa hums. Spring blossoms into her chest.
Sunbeams fall onto the curtains on one Sunday morning. Elizabeth opens the curtains. Something something it’s good to get some light in, Nerissa can’t really bother to remember. A wooden slab of cherry sits silently on the carving desk– Elizabeth built that– and Nerissa sighs. She really doesn’t know what to do with it. Her rose keeps telling her that “You don’t need to know what you want to do now,” and that “creation takes time, my raven,” but she’s growing much too impatient. She clicks her tongue and falls into the bed.
Elizabeth takes her to a baseball field the next Monday. The grass had been freshly cut, and Nerissa can smell the petrichor rising from the ground. She raises her eyebrows.
“We can play something fun for a change,” Elizabeth chuckles. “To vent it out, maybe. Or find new things.”
Nerissa finds herself asking why. Elizabeth titters off, brushing a stray hair off her raven’s face. The sun is visible now. Morning has passed.
“It is the closest thing to murder we can do, no?”
They buy a two-hour long slot. Elizabeth comes out with a sack of baseballs and a bat. Nerissa feels her fingers twitch upon seeing the sheen upon the metal.
“Catch,” Elizabeth says, throwing the bat at her at lightning speed. She catches it by instinct, palm on the handle after a single blink. Blood and adrenaline rushes into her arms, and her hand itches.
Elizabeth laughs. She places a ball on the stand before coming over to Nerissa. Palms press on the sides of Nerissa’s arms, and she’s taken back to a time long gone. For a moment, she sees the man tied to the chair, shaking in a futile struggle. For a moment, she sees the dim orange light and the blood painted across the walls. She exhales.
“Eyes forward, sweetheart,” She hears Elizabeth say. “Hold the handle steady. You hit it when you’re ready.”
Nerissa nods slowly. She feels Elizabeth step back, and she mourns the loss of warmth and touch. Her vision tunnels, green filling her vision. The face of a governor comes into the back of her mind and the anger rushes into her bloodstream. She’s killed him that night, watching as his lifeblood spreads across the floor. Back then, it was different. She didn’t know how to kill. Now, she is the Nerissa who has taken up the Governor’s coat. A growl threatens to spill out her throat.
Nerissa steps back, and with a burst of predatory strength she swings, aiming to kill. The ball flies across the field, soaring far into the corner. It looks like a home run. Water rushes through the fire in her veins. She thinks for a moment, that this is how relief feels.
Elizabeth laughs. “Well, that feels great, doesn’t it?”
Nerissa heaves, letting her arm drop to the side. The top of the bat scrapes the floor. There isn’t any blood, this time. She laughs raggedly.
Elizabeth takes that response. “We have a few more, and an hour to go. Ready?”
At the end of the session, they end up shaking each other by the shoulders, laughing brightly like innocent children. The bat lay forgotten on the grass.
Elizabeth drags Nerissa on a train to a park she’s never known. The grass crunches underneath her feet not unlike bones crushed in the wake of Death, and the silhouette of a lake spreads before her eyes. The water shines like glitter, flecks of stardust spread onto the surface. Nerissa finds herself drawn to the edge of the bank.
She stares into the water, and her reflection wavers under the waves. The galaxy weaves into something else. She no longer sees her reflection. Instead, it is a Nerissa stained in red, down to the very soles of her heels. A dagger sits in her palms, scarred from the scarlet. She feels her breath grow ragged, and she steps back. Elizabeth takes notice, eyes darting towards the lake. Nothing. She thought, for a split second, that there was a threat. She raises herself from her spot on the tree.
Nerissa feels Elizabeth press onto her, and she relaxes, letting herself breathe again. Elizabeth runs a finger across the shadow of her jaw, and kisses her there. The apparition in the water disappears. It’s just her, and Elizabeth.
The cherry slab on the carving table has taken shape. The shavings are brushed away, leaving an imperfect rendition of a primrose sitting quietly against the wall. Warm evening sun shines into the surface of the wood, casting shadows onto the surface of the wood. Letters are engraved into the stem. Ex Cineribus. From the Ashes. One may burn themselves to death just to live, but from that ash comes rebirth and renewal.
Ash, too, allows things to grow. It seeps into the ground and mixes with the earth. When water inevitably comes, the ash is transmuted into budding blossoms. With Death comes Rebirth, and with Rebirth comes Creation. Nerissa used to love with blood and fire, cutting into skin and smothering reds into the deepest parts of herself. That was all she knew. She’s different, now. The blood in her changes into something more beautiful. Blood can transform into flowers, she realises. Her love changes into something warmer, something like passing soft blossoms to another’s hands and of liquid gold falling from the fruit of the trees and of small seedlings sprouting out from the cracked earth. The red has stained the hands of the disciple, never to be washed away, but even bloodied hands can learn to hold softly.
Nerissa opens the door to a bloodied Elizabeth. A gash opens into the side of her abdomen– stab wound, and she crumples onto the side of the wall. So much emotion flares into Nerissa all at once, but one stands out. Anger. Primal Anger. Thoughts run past her head a mile a minute. Who hurt you, where were you, I need them dead, you have to live, Elizabeth–
Her rose groans, and Nerissa immediately runs to get the medkit. Her hands shook, not from the fear of death– she’s long been dead, by her own bloodstained hands– but from the hot bubbling anger threatening to tip over. Elizabeth winces when she treats the wound.
“My raven– I know you’re angry–”
“Rosebud, do not say it–”
“Don’t kill him.”
Nerissa’s breath hitches. She pauses her work. A long sigh escapes her throat. That night, another indent is added onto the walls. The knife sticks out of it, devoid of any red.
In a memory-addled haze, Nerissa kicks off the blanket and clambers into the shower. Gods, she’s cold. Her hands find the knob, turning the temperature to the max. The droplets burn into her skin, and she lets herself light up in flames. She laughs dryly. So this is what Elizabeth feels. So this is how it feels to burn. That’s right. She’s killed herself once, and she’ll kill herself again.
Elizabeth breaks the door down, leaving the cracked remains of a doorknob on the floor. She almost glowers at Nerissa, who smiles wryly from her place in the shower. Her back steams red from the temperature. Elizabeth immediately runs to turn the shower off.
“Nerissa,” She says through her teeth, “We’re getting you out of here, ok?”
Elizabeth slowly pulls Nerissa out of the shower, careful not to touch the burned bits of skin. She makes a mental note to treat that later. What’s happening to you? Is this rebirth?
Nerissa slumps into Elizabeth, nuzzling tiredly into her rose’s neck. “Sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologise for.” Elizabeth says, finally. That’s the last thing Nerissa remembers before she passes out in her sweetheart’s arms.
Burning is destruction. It blazes into wood and the bark chips off under the fire. Burning is also purification. Saints are anointed under water and ash and fire, ascending as close to God with piety. Nerissa has burnt herself dry, and now she rises again, born anew.
Nerissa finds herself in front of a mirror. She exhales. The scissors shake in her hands. Her hair has grown far too long.
Hair is memory. It holds the weight of all the blood and the murder and of Elizabeth, and of what could have been. A death of a rose, of a love filled with blood and fire. Nerissa finds it hard to pick the scissors up.
Cutting that hair means losing all of that memory. It is the cutting of ties, with her past, with all the elegance and poise and the faux manner, and of the anger that sits deep within the cracks of her heart. It means starting again. Nerissa has grown tired of being angry. She’ll move forward, not as Nerissa Ravencroft the Follower, nor as Nerissa Ravencroft the Second Governor, but just Nerissa Ravencroft, with no blood ties whatsoever. The red may not wash off, but the least she can do is point the knife away.
She cuts her hair short, watching it fall onto the sink, the floor, to her feet. It feels like a weight has come off her shoulders. It is a burden released. It is rebirth. Nerissa looks up. It’s not the best haircut ever, she thinks, but it will do. It will have to do.
Nerissa was once drenched in blood. A messy and mangled shadow. One who would not hesitate to kill if her anger were to boil over. She learns to love in a softer way.
Elizabeth trims the edges of her raven’s hair. Nerissa hums contentedly, swaying from side to side.
“Love, please– I need to trim your hair. Stop swaying.”
A giggle bubbles from Nerissa’s throat. “You’re funny.”
“Sweetheart, I am being very serious right now. I don’t want to hurt you.” Elizabeth presses a knuckle into Nerissa’s back, and she jolts up in alarm.
“Hey– Ah, okay, fine. Do whatever.”
Nerissa comes out of the bathroom with a haircut way better than she could’ve done by herself, and a rose lovingly stuck to the side of her head. She decides that she’ll love this particular rose as much as she can.
Instinct is something that is hard to change. It can, however, be used to do better things. Nerissa has only used knives to kill. Now, she uses that instinct she has painstakingly learnt from a once-bloody Elizabeth to create, instead. The cherry-carved primrose sits together with the Rose and the Raven, right next to a flowerpot of white gardenias Nerissa has chosen to grow quite a while ago.
“Nerissa, my raven,” Elizabeth calls out from the kitchen door, “Do you want some buttered potatoes?”
Footsteps get louder, and Nerissa’s head peeks out from the doorway. She grins childishly. “Those are mine, though? I baked them!”
“We can share, right?” Elizabeth chuckles, and Nerissa feels her heart soar. “I’m a little peckish.”
“Sure.” She says, stepping into the kitchen. “I hope they taste great.”
Elizabeth, Nerissa realises, has changed. She’s no longer that bloodthirsty Scarlet Governor she used to know. She has changed herself, too. She’s no longer the Nerissa who would reach for her knife at anger’s first notice. To be loved is to be changed, and it’s like flowers are sprouting from the ground beneath Spring’s first winds. They no longer love desperately. They no longer spill red over the walls and the floor and into their hands, the blood transforming into blossoms and butterflies. They know they’re for each other. They don’t need to claw into skin and bone to feel. They have carved the other into themselves so deeply nothing else could fit. Both of them have changed, and they fill the space with crimson blooms and feathers.