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Frances has now been gone for thirteen days.
But in her absence, as impossible as it should be for the world to be allowed to move on after her, the seconds have continued ticking, creeping into minutes and becoming dreadful hours. Soon enough, another week without her will have passed, slipping through prying and begging-for-answers hands, and Mary will still remain, scared but not wanting to admit to herself why she is so scared.
If Frances is even still at all aliv—
No. They must have taken her to Bedlam.
After Frances stabbed her terrible suitor with scissors, they must have taken her to Bedlam. There is no other place for her to be now. She is alive, and they have taken her to Bedlam, dragging her away by the scruff of her neck even as she struggled to come back to the rest of them. Because Frances never would have left them so easily, without being first forced to go. She has always cared so greatly for the rest of them, she has, and she would never leave so easily. Mary has held onto that knowledge, clutching her ringed necklace, like she has been able to hold on to not much else. Because she knows Frances, she does. And in knowing her, she knows she would never leave her without a fight.
Frances has now been gone for thirteen days.
And Mary keeps repeating it in her head, pretending to herself with a horrible childishness that it will cease to be true if she prays hard enough. She has never been one for believing in God, bastard that He must be, but Frances, for as long as Mary has known her, has always believed in goodness. Mary has wanted to believe too for quite some time now, even if only for her Frances' sake, so she prays anyways. Because Frances is good. She is among the most good that this world has ever had to offer, and if anything newly terrible has happened to her, then goodness will never be allowed to exist again. Even terrible people, greedy to have everything they want at a moment's whim, want goodness to exist, don't they? They wouldn't take it all from the world, even if that hesitation only comes from their own selfishness.
Oh, who is Mary even kidding, other than herself.
Frances is gone, and she will not be coming back.
Nearly two weeks ago, Mary, idiotic and sick as she is, was entirely oblivious to what was happening in just another room of Braxton's Sanitorium and Finishing School. She was lying not unlike how she is now, thinking to herself and facing away from the other girls, her eyes shut tight and trying forcibly to will her body to sleep despite its nervous shaking. She found herself frightened by Frances' lateness, but well. It's been a while since Mary has found a student coming back from a suitor's lone visit at odd hours to be worth losing sleep over, and her body allowed her to drift into restless sleep eventually.
To fall asleep, that horrible night two weeks ago, it helped to think of Frances. Beautiful Frances who on a typical day was the last person Mary saw at night and the first she saw in the morning. Frances has never liked it when Mary stays up, staying awake just for the sake of it despite it doing nothing to help either one of them. Frances used to tell her to stop imaging bad things, telling her to dream nice dreams of her instead despite Mary telling her, on multiple occasions, that she rarely ever dreams and only ever has nightmares, and Mary wanted to respect her wishes.
She shouldn't have.
She should have gone after her, causing a storm in the night before something bad could ever even happen to Frances, but she didn't.
Because even in the worst of her nightmares, Mary never dared to believe in the idea of Frances being forever gone, as unfathomable as that seemed to her before. On some level, deep down, she must have still believed in goodness, despite everything. But she was wrong to not be as concerned as she could have been. Being beneath the same roof did not make Mary privy to the exactness of what happened to make Frances stab that awful man, and now, the bed beside her remains terrifyingly empty. When Mary awoke the following morning, she was already gone, leaving before she ever even had a chance to say goodbye. And now Mary will never know what exactly happen, even if she can suspect.
In the thirteen days since Frances' departure, Mary has known one singular thing, holding onto her faith of Frances.
The candle of faith, to Mary, has never been very bright or long lasting, a sputtering flame and always meant to die, but she has always believed in Frances. Frances came to this school in a fire, her hair blazing and shorn short in anger, and it was difficult to not fall into step beside her. Even then, from that very first day and as bitterly jaded as Mary has always been, it was difficult to not fall in love with Frances, trusting her like she has trusted no one else. In all the following time, stretching just short of a year, it was a challenge to not love her more with every passing day, falling so completely into the girl who'd sold seances in back alleyways that she should have been turned into ashes by the flame of her. But Frances has never been cruel, allowing her to be burnt.
But Frances never would have left without first saying goodbye.
Mary has never doubted that for a second. On the first day without her, for a moment, she dared to wonder if Frances had somehow managed to escape, running away in only her nightgown even as winter rapidly approached, but it was a laughable idea to even Mary's confused and addled and begging-for-answers brain. They had plans to escape together. Mary knew Frances wouldn't have ruined their chances for that, picking a time to be vicious without preparation, and she was right to know that. She was. And after that obvious realization, she was able to put the puzzle pieces together soon enough, knowing how terrible suitors are and have always been.
When Mary asked Mrs. Forrester where Frances had gone, after three days of waiting idly and trying to not let herself wring her hands too obviously like a wife worried about a husband gone off to sea, she received a simple and sharp slap alongside her cheek, answering the question of when Frances would be coming back more clearly and starkly than any words could have managed. And in any case, soon enough, the rumors of scissors, coming in the form of a sly remark from the slighted Headmaster to his wife just mere days later, sufficed to fill in the blanks that the contact had not, proving needlessly that Mary had never been wrong to trust in her faith of Frances even if it never did anything to save her from being k—
Frances has now been gone for fourteen days.
Ten days ago, Mary's ears were ringing from more than just being slapped, but time has not stopped in its crawl forward, wavering like a confused spirit might. Midnight must have passed by now, marking the passage of two horrible weeks to as close to the exact time as possible in all its unknowableness.
The contraband Speaker tiles on the bathroom floor remain silent, unwavering too. And in the following, often sleepless, nights, the intimate and dizzying knowledge of Frances' forever absence has plagued Mary worse than any form of Veil Sickness ever could. It is unknowable, the exact words that Frances said to her suitor before attacking him. It is halfway to unknowable, why Frances even brought the scissors with her in the first place if not for the intention of using them, and thinking about the most obvious answers, struggling to wrap her mind around all the possibilities that caused Frances to strike in self defense despite the obviousness, feels not unlike being diagnosed with Veil Sickness all over again.
The illness once seemed like a death sentence, worse even than the idea of being sent to the gallows, but Mary finds herself wondering now, staring at the emptied bed beside her very own where Frances' chest once steadily rose and fell in during sleep, if her restlessness will kill her first. She finds herself wondering if it would have been better to be hanged, after all. Even if it would have meant never meeting Frances, at least Mary wouldn't have had to lose her.