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Once the door closes behind her, Sua feels her shoulders collapse.
It is far too quiet in the dressing room, she realizes after her breathing settles, far too silent for it to be comfortable. Sua had never gotten used to the quiet; there had almost been something to fill the space. When she was smaller, her days were filled with echoes: the buzz of Mother’s wings from down the hallway, the pattering of uniformly slippered feet against cold tiles, the chatter of mirrored girls vying to pull the spotlight to them, the pointed laughter of her favorite. Then it had been the Garden, and it was never quiet there, children singing or children crying, piano keys under clumsy hands, the everwhirling machinery hidden behind plastic trees.
Only her worst moments had been silent. Sitting alone and cold against the glass in the transport box before the light, her light, came in. The pause between being scored, weighted, inspected. Entering a familiar room during a visit to find it empty. The aftermath of a slap; once, twice. This now, too.
But for the first time, she welcomes the quiet. It had been far, far too loud outside this room. It had been too loud for days. Sua had barely breathed since the day she’d been announced as a finalist, Mother taking the opportunity of her debut to show off her favorite pet at every party and runaways and magazines she could, weighing her name against her own. With the Stage on the horizon, the schedule had grown more and more packed. Today, the big day itself, she had been woken up hours before the sun rose, and spent her entire morning in a cold studio with cameras flashing and her name on a static loop.
When she was finally freed from the interviewers, Mother hadn’t been waiting for her— she had already scurried off to another camera. Instead, a Guard had been waiting, hidden out of sight from the lenses. It had started her: she had never come across one before. Mother found them too unsightly, and the Garden had its own forms of punishment. The Guard hadn’t spoken to her, just gestured with a metal hand to follow it through the human back exit.
She had followed it quietly, wrapping her robe tighter around herself as her thinly slippered feet pattered against the ground. While the studio hadn’t been quiet, backstage was a cacophony; she thinks it is the loudest thing she has ever heard. Garbled voices, an alien tongue, shout across the space, echoing through the narrow hallways. Everything needs to be in order, of course. Everything needs to be in order because it’s the 50th Season of Alien Stage, and such an anniversary needs to go off without a hitch.
The Guard, its shiny armor dulled by the poor backstage lighting, had suddenly come to a halt. Sua had nearly run into it, but paused, steadied herself; she’s always been known for her grace. Best not to ruin the image so close to the finish line.
“Here.” The guide had gestured to the door they’d stopped in front of, hand outstretched. It was almost a polite gesture; Sua could almost find it kind, if it wasn’t for the single beaming red eye tracking her every move, bearing down on her like a far too bright sun, its weapon hanging over its shoulder loosely, like a toy. Sua’s eyes had traced the lines of the gun for a moment before turning away, towards the door.
Sua had nodded once, stepping closer to it. The Guard, job complete, had stepped away, turning down the hallway, back towards the circus of noise. Another level of her repetition, soft and doll-like and unthreatening, must precede her. They don’t expect her to run. Security is busy; maybe even busier than the contestants, scurrying around like ants around the Stage, especially after last season’s little mess. She had wondered, fleetingly, if that Guard would join them on the Stage later, if its scope would be another spotlight for her to step into.
She had waved away the thought, staring instead at the door in front of her. Someone had painted her name in silver letters across the door, in the same font that had been stamped across all of her report cards and the lyrics she’d submitted for the First Round. If she had squinted, she could see the remains of the last name they had painted here, paint poorly covering up the lines of an ‘H’ under her ‘S’.
She knew that there were only eight dressing rooms. She knew they were all in this little hallway. Knew that one of the other doors she had just passed held her heart behind it. Maybe she would be right there, right next door; if Sua closed her eyes and concentrated, she thought she could hear her voice, practicing their harmony, just like she did all those years ago on that hill.
She had wanted, more than anything, to run down the hallway to her, to open Mizi’s door and throw herself into her arms. She wanted to cry into Mizi’s black dress, the stage gown she’d had designed just to match Sua’s, the mesh that glimmered in the light like the night sky, until it’s soaked, until it’s too wet to be worn, until it reminds Mizi of her homeworld. She wanted Mizi to hold her close, skin to skin, so that her fragile heart could sync up with Mizi’s. She wanted Mizi to trace her body with her hands, her tongue; she wanted Mizi to reach inside her and take her apart. She wanted Mizi to run her hands through her hair and tell her that she’s everything. She wanted them to lie together and never be apart.
But she cannot. There are wants, and there are needs. Sua knew what she wanted, what she desired most, but she knew what she needed to happen even more. She knew that if she turned around now, there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to see this through. There has been something growing in Mizi’s eyes for the past few months, something sharp and fragile, something she desperately tried to hide every time she looked at Sua. Something that only sneaked through the cracks in the desperate moments, a truth she only showed to Sua, and even that, never in its full. Sua had wanted it, had craved the wall that only crumbled in her fingers, but now, she cannot see it. She needed to look away. If she saw it, she thought her heart would shatter, and she had long ago decided that would not be the way she died.
Instead, she had thought of the interview they had done a few months back during the auditions, when Sua had been waiting, praying to see how the lines would be drawn. She thought of Mizi, beaming at the camera as her foot tapped under the chair; she thought of Mizi looking over at her, before telling the interviewer about their tie, how they were going to be the most fantastic duo in the history of the stage. Sua had closed her eyes, imagining Mizi’s dream, her dream. Must be nice.
Then, she had opened the door.
Now, her eyes adjust to the dim lighting of the room. It’s practically empty, and a little cold. She approaches the lone piece of furniture in the room, a vanity, letting her robe slip off her shoulders, leaving her bare. Despite the chill in the room, she does not move to pick it up. The itch is finally off her skin; it had nettled her for hours, through all her photoshoots, brought on from the two dresses she would never wear again. The interviewers had eaten them up; had gasped that the long, trailing ballgown with the crown of pearls would look stunning under the rumored golden lights of the fifth round; had made her twirl round and round so the ruffles hanging from her hips would spiral out around her, agreeing that it would be a memorable finale look. Sua had posed for hours, never once reaching to scratch behind her neck, never reliving the itch; standing still under the folds of Mother’s signature frills and tulles was a familiar sort of drowning, unlike the soft dread that had been pooling in her stomach all morning.
Next to the vanity stands a mannequin, clothed in a costume that is very much unlike Mother’s tastes: no ruffles, no ribbons, no trailing skirts that Sua used to trip over when she was small. The costumes had been the most important part, to Mother. She had barely considered what Sua would sing.
All her attention had gone to deciding on what her favorite pet would wear on the Stage, what would best reflect her own tastes. For the first round, she had made concessions, leaning towards what was currently in trend for human pets rather than her own decadence, dressing Sua in a simple silhouette, constrictive around her ribcage, with a bow sewn in the center of her chest. She would have the other rounds to display her own designs; if Sua had been a different person, she might have laughed at the thought. But instead, she nodded silently along.
Her costume stands before her now: Sua runs her fingers down its seams, resting her fingers along the hem. It was rather short, leaving most of her legs and collarbones exposed. It’s fine, she supposes. She hadn’t intended it to serve as armor, anyway.
The slip of white has not a single crease in it. It’s just as flawless as the day she’d seen it last, when the attendants of the Garden had surrounded her, fitting it perfectly to the curves of her body, when Mizi had held it up in the light afterward, pressing it against her own skin, as if it could fit her. Mizi’s own costume had slipped off Sua’s shoulder, hung loose against Sua’s chest as Mizi had studied her under her skin, their odd dress-up game.
On the vanity itself rest her gloves and the headband; her boots lay on the floor by her feet. Next to the gloves is a little box, left open.
Sua knows what’s in it. Her mother had briefly lost her mind over the final touch to Sua’s costume, had made her stand still for hours as she tested out every gemstone: amethysts to match her eyes, citrine to contrast, diamonds to gleam against her skin. Her mother had hissed about which stone would shine best under the stage lights, which would set Sua apart from the rest of the competition, which would keep Nigeh’s name on the paparazzi’s mouths the longest; Sua had stared ahead, unmoving, doll-like as demanded, watching as her homeworld’s star streaked across the sky, counting down.
In the end, her mother had chosen the pearls. They gleam out at her now, catching in the vanity lights. Sua, quietly, reaches out, picking up just one earring from the box. They’re real, she knows, sourced from the sea— perhaps from the same ocean Mizi had called home. She decides she likes that, a little piece of her girl-of-the-sea, her siren, her jellyfish girl, with her.
Sua had never seen the ocean; she had only Mizi’s chatter about her own planet to paint the picture. She knows the mechanics, though; the pressure of the depths, the tidal forces. Forces in motion, cause and effect; this she knows well.
Sua holds the pearl up close, studying it. It’s bigger than she thought they would be, about half the size of her thumb, a little weight in her hands. She catches herself in the mirror. In a trace, she raises her hand, raises the pearl not to her ear, but to her neck. She presses it against her skin, against the brand seared into her flesh; it’s just the right size. Sua’s heartbeat, trained and restrained, is steady as she practices, one final dress rehearsal, where the bullet will collide with her throat; cause, effect.
Her neck is an oddity, at this point. So much has brushed against it over her life. The tied bow of a bonnet, the brush of Hia’s nails; splashes of water from recess play that would soak the neckline of her dress, grazes from grass when they’ll roll in it together. Mizi’s pointer finger when she poked at Sua’s cheeks; Mizi’s sleeves as she napped on across Sua instead of studying; Mizi’s thumb brushing against her jawline as she slapped her; Mizi’s hair draping across it as she pressed her fingers deep into Sua. Mizi’s palms were trembling, guided to Sua’s neck by the wrists as the water around them grew colder and colder. Her collar, always clinched a little too tight around her throat, blinked green, then yellow, then red, red red, the older they had grown. The iron-hot needle that had traced her name into the flesh. The pearl now; the bullet then. Cause, effect; the little pieces that have built her up, her life bleeding down through her veins.
She knows that under the pearl is one of her critical veins, that if she pressed harder against it, she would feel her own pulse through it. The scope would line up perfectly there, a balanced point, where enough blood would burst from her wound to send the crowd into a frenzy, but also enough to kill her quickly. The Seiygen had perfected the art of killing a human; Sua’s studies have shown her the progression of their violence. The earlier Stages had been much more violent, sometimes requiring multiple shots to take down the loser. The neck shot was clean, but it still left a little bit of thrill up to the audience: if a pet fought against their competitor or tried to flee the stage, the shot wouldn’t be nearly as clean, and would allow for the right amount of blood to get the crowds into a real frenzy.
Sua would go down easily. She would not run; she would not flinch. She would not face the bullet head-on; no, despite all her practice, the idea of watching her death on its arc still made her want to throw up. She would instead turn towards Mizi, hoping the light of her love’s smile would numb the pain. She would let the bullet cut through her neck. She would fall to the stage and be no more. Cause and effect; simple as that.
She thinks she should be more afraid than she is. She is no fearless saint walking to her execution, but she has at least come to terms with it. Her hands no longer shake when pressed to her throat. Her other classmates, the ones whom she had barely known, had not. Just yesterday, she had walked past the two boys slated to sing against Till and Ivan, sitting together in silence, eyes already dead and hands shaking. Hours ago, as she waited for her second interview, the green-haired girl, the poor thing slated for the fourth round, against last season’s champion, sobbed against the mirror in the bathroom. They all saw it; they all knew where the line would be drawn, but only Sua, fragile, rabbit-hearted Sua, seemed to find a strange, trained peace in it.
She had been deemed a star by the Seiygen: they plastered her image across the galaxies, called for her name in a thousand roaring tongues. They called her a star, so she would die like one.
On weeks where their class performed well, high grades and good behavior, the teachers of the Garden would grant them a small reward: they opened a hatch in the ceiling of their artificial sky, breaking through the illusion to allow them a tiny amount of truth in starlight. On those nights, when the sky would twinkle down on them, Sua found herself just as mesmerized as she had been the day she stepped onto the shuttle and left her homeworld behind, eyes fixated on the galaxies and heart pounding silently in her chest. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen the stars since then, but she much preferred this to the wild expanse she and Mizi had stared up at from the rusty-red, exposed corner of the Garden. That had been too much, overwhelming and nearly suffocating. (Then, she had only been afraid of the vastness; only later would she add in the fear of the steep cliff the space cut off into, only when her heart had dangled from its edge, a falling star Sua desperately caught). This was more manageable, a perfect sliver of infinity in her hands.
Once, the class had been extremely lucky, and their teachers had rewarded them by opening the sky three weeks in a row. On the first night, Sua had lain next to Mizi, whispering into her ear as she pointed out patterns in the sky. Some had been passed down to her; Hia’s little hidden corner of their Mother’s home had a small window she often spent hours staring out of, and she had traced her observations into Sua’s back as she untangled her hair, tutting about her unkempt knots. Others she sketched out on the spot just to see if they would make Mizi laugh, just to see if the other girl would grasp her hands and smile brightly.
The second week, she’d noticed that one of the stars in her favorite constellation, the jellyfish she’d created in the center of the sky, was missing a star. Then, she had written it off as a mistake, a trick of light through her exhausted eyes— she had stood upright for hours and hours of testing that day, her shoulders still aching from where the experimental collar had dug into her flesh and her knees shaking under every step, but she still let Mizi pull her into a little game of tag with some of the others, all chasing each other under the stars; she hadn’t looked back up for the rest of the night.
In the third week, the star was still missing.
It stuck with her, for some reason— the stars had always been a constant, and there was something about the change that unsettled her. So she had asked one of their teachers about it, staying behind as the rest of the advanced students filed out to go play. Her teacher had clapped excitedly, telling her that she was truly an exceptional little pet if she had noticed that, and explained that she had technically witnessed the death of a star, witnessed its last waves of light traveling through the void to reach them.
That fact settled on her chest; the next time they opened the ceiling to see the stars, all Sua could think of was the accursed snow that also came down from that same sky; that night, she had curled up against Mizi and shut her eyes, pretending to fall asleep beside her. It weighed with her enough to push her to action, a strange thing. She had gone back to the teacher and asked about the dying star, asking how it happened. Said that she wanted to use it for one of her new songs for their composition exam.
She had left with a small textbook in her hands, something historical, of old human science — one of the few benefits of being one of Anakt’s top students. They would want something new to put into their advertisements, a little blurb about how Anakt’s training produced exceptional pets as they threw her image across dozens of local star systems. That night, separated from Mizi, who had fallen asleep early after her dance lessons, she had begun to read it.
Human scientists had studied the stars, had tried to understand forces much larger than themselves with their meager tools. They had studied how stars died, called the moment a supernova— at least, that’s what they called it when the big ones died; the smaller ones just seemed to burn themselves out into nothingness. As the giant stars grew and grew, their cores, their innermost part, was pressed tighter under all the star’s mass. But there was a set point, a specific mass, and when the star got to that mass, the pressure against its core would be too much, and it would collapse under itself. It would explode into a beautiful burst, a beam of light across the void. It would leave behind its core, its heart, and be no more.
Sua had sat alone in her room, blue light washing over the pages, tracing the words before her. Spelling out the limit. Chan-dra-sek-har. Humans used to name things after each other, right? One of her textbooks had said that. It felt like a human name, one of the long ones they used to be allowed to keep. A human name on such an impossible thing, the death of a star.
Even the stars died. But they knew exactly when it would happen. A star would go throughout its life, and know the exact point where its heart would fail it. There must have been a comfort to it, to know, to not have to wonder anymore. Sua had turned the page; humans also believed that the remains of a supernova contained the materials that formed human life. Sua had drummed her fingers on the page. To know exactly when death would come, and to promise life as an aftermath. All her needs wrapped up in one neat bow. Wouldn’t that be nice?
(This is what Sua’s textbooks do not tell her, what she will never learn, what will follow in her footsteps: there is not just one type of supernova. There is another type, which centers around a white dwarf, a stellar husk, one of those smaller stars, all burnt out. It orbits around another star; sometimes its companion is a massive star, glowing gold; sometimes it’s another smaller, white dwarf, heart already cold. But the first white dwarf takes: it accretes mass from its companion, until it again reaches that critical mass, the Chandrasekhar limit. Then, on the white dwarf’s surface begins a runaway effect that leads to a supernova. This type of supernova destroys its core. There is no heart left behind. Those human scientists never really learned what happened to the companion. Maybe it would be destroyed in the blast. Maybe it would change into something else, devastated and forever scarred in the supernovae’s wake. Who is to say?)
Sua, now, removes the earring from her neck, lifts her hand to thread it through her ear. Instead, the pearl falls from Sua’s grasp, slipping through her fingers and crashing to the ground. On impact, it begins to spin around, in orbit around her feet. As she watches it circle itself, she wonders, for one small moment, what would happen if she ran for the door. It would be unguarded, she knew; the Guards were too busy around the Stage to station one of their sentries outside her door, no need to worry about Sua, sweet, soft, doll-like, stupid Sua. What if she proved them wrong? What if she threw open the door, and burst into the room next over, standing before Mizi, leaving behind her robe, for once in her life fully bare to the woman she loves? What if she took her hands, not to her throat but simply in hers, and they ran, and they ran and they ran far, far away from here? It had been done before, hadn’t it? They never had found that girl who jumped from the Stage last season, right? Maybe they could—
No. Sua runs the numbers. There’s too much in their way. Too many ways it could go wrong. Too many uncertainties. Too many ways she could bring Mizi down with her.
Sua is not a brave woman. She does not think she is strong, or courageous. Most days she doesn’t even know if she is good, knowing what will come out of her love. But she has her resolve, at least. She knows what she needs to do. That has to be enough. That has to count for something.
So Sua kneels and picks up the earring. She slides it perfectly into place this time and puts in its pair. She pushes back her bangs with her headband and laces up the little heeled boots, slips on the dress, and zips it up until it presses against her ribs. She fluffs up the bow so it lies perfectly across her chest. Pulls up her gloves, covering her hands. With every step, her heart grows heavier and heavier. She knows the pressure will only continue to grow; she knows the exact second the force will become too much for her, when the scores she already determined will flash above their heads, once she turns to Mizi, knowing it will be her last time. In the light of her lover’s eyes, she will reach her own Chandraseaker limit; then, too, her heart will collapse.
Once the gloves are secure around her elbows, Sua turns to face herself in the mirror once more. Her dress fits her perfectly. The pearls do look perfect against her monochrome whites and her dark eyes and hair. She doesn’t look real. Her skin is flawless, and she does not cry.
Instead, she closes her eyes and clasps her hands together. She prays; once for luck, and once for forgiveness.
That will have to be enough.