Work Text:
She should have felt relief. She should have felt something other than that hollow drumbeat in her chest.
She should have been happy that Becka survived. After the blood and the praying in the dark. After Agnes held her while Becka shook apart from what she had done, what she had done for her. They had sacrificed everything for one another and somehow, by some twisted and graceless miracle, both remained alive.
That should have been enough.
It was not.
Mrs. Grove was sentenced to death. Of course. The hand that rocks the cradle was merciful. The hand that rocks the cradle was responsible. The hand that rocks the cradle was not needed once that child grew up.
Sometimes Daisy spoke about love as though it were a bomb with a heartbeat. She had told Hannah how much of the terrorist violence had been driven by love. Mothers for daughters. Families tearing nations open with their bare hands because they could not bear to lose one another.
Violence out of love.
And every road in her mind led back to Becka.
Becka who killed her own father because he touched Agnes.
Divine justice. She had believed that. Believed the Lord worked through Becka's hands, through the shears she found, through the way she had not hesitated. But then came the punishment. The trial. The sentence that was not death but something worse—Garth's house, Garth's ring, Garth's bed.
The Lord was not merciful.
The Lord was never merciful to women.
Only men were afforded that.
Men were forgiven endlessly. Men touched, harmed, consumed, and were cleansed by prayer afterward. Women carried every stain permanently. Agnes knew this now. Hannah knew this.
She had a new guardian now. Older. Different from most men, if any man could be called different in Gilead. He did not stare. He did not get close. Blessed be. Her father had made sure, after Mr. Grove's hands, that she would not be sullied again. No more marks on her record. She was untouchable now in a way that felt like another cage.
She was not allowed to visit Becka yet.
She did not know if she ever would be.
But Shunammite could. Shunammite went as she pleased into Hannah's best friend's house. The first few visits were extremely worrying, Shunammite came back with uncharacteristically tight lips and downcast eyes. But then something shifted. Becka started speaking to her. Started showering again. She did not respond well when Garth was brought up, or anything about children. No. She just wanted to hear about the outside world. What the plums were doing. Small things. Safe things. And Shunammite was happy to oblige in gossip.
Agnes hated the way her chest tightened when she thought of this. Hated the vainful ache that bloomed behind her ribs—the one that whispered ask if they talk about me. Becka would not have told Shunammite about their sinful act before the wedding. But did she tell Shunammite that she missed Agnes?
Agnes just wanted to be privy to contact with Becka. To know what she was getting herself into. To have something that was not this starvation that never ceased.
The car window was cold against her forehead. She stared out at the road, at the trees, at the sky that did not care who lived and who died beneath it. At least there were no hangings on the way to the Chapin residence. She did not want a reminder of what they did to gender traitors. What they did to women who loved wrong.
Her guardian let her out of the car and Garth waited outside the front door.
Agnes had thought she would feel something when she saw him. The same rush that had happened before—that confusing, misplaced thing she mistook for love. But now it was just flashes of jealousy. She hoped these envious thoughts were due to wanting what Becka had.
But a hidden part of Hannah suspected they were not. A part of her hated that he got to come home to Becka's voice. That he got to sit across from her at meals. That he got to watch the way the light moved across her face and call it his.
Garth smiled.
Nothing. She felt nothing but annoyance at that smile—wide and easy, as though he had not swallowed her best friend whole. He opened the front door. Said Becka was waiting.
Once Agnes was inside, he closed the door, leaving her guardian and him outside. So she was alone in this house that was once Mr. Grove's and was now Mr. Chapin's. Never Becka's. Even if she was the constant between them. Garth had inherited an entire life from another man's death. Got to be a commander. Got to be the man that married Becka.
She found Becka in the kitchen.
And suddenly Hannah was back inside herself fully.
They stared.
Hannah fell into Becka's eyes like she had been falling her whole life—like the ground had given out years ago and she was still waiting to hit it. She had not seen her face in months, and she was hungry. Hungry for every detail: the faint hollows beneath her eyes, the softness of her hair pulled back from her face. She had not seen her uncovered in months and now every detail felt sacred.
From the look Becka gave her, she was starving too.
So what did starving girls do but make food.
The countertops were already full. Bowls of batter, flour dusted across every surface like the first snowfall of winter. Like something trying to cover what was underneath.
Hannah did not know how to speak first. She feared the sound of her own voice. She did not even know what to say. Every word she had practiced on the ride over—how are you, I've missed you, I think about you every night—felt like a lie or a confession or both. So she waited for Becka to speak.
And perhaps afterwards she wished Becka had remained silent too.
"Do you remember how my mother would stress bake?" Becka asked. Her voice was different. Thinner. A thread pulled too tight. "She thought that having skills in baking could account for her deficiencies. Being a glorified econowife."
Becka did a small laugh. It did not reach her eyes. It did not even try.
"No terrible baking could make up for what deficiencies I am."
Hannah rushed forward before she could think, before she could pray, before she could do anything but move. She grabbed Becka's hands. Held them. Heard Becka's sharp intake of breath, the sound of a wound touched unexpectedly.
Silence.
She had at least gotten Becka to stop talking.
Hannah rubbed her thumb slowly across Becka’s knuckles. Back and forth. Back and forth. The wedding ring caught against her skin and revulsion bloomed instantly inside her. That ugly thing, that brand that sunk into the flesh like a thorn. So she focused on the other hand instead. She interlaced her own fingers with Becka's right hand and let go of the left, as if she could pretend it was not there. As if she could un-claim what had been claimed.
"You don't have any deficiencies to make up for," she said firmly. The words came from somewhere deeper than her throat.
Becka pulled her hand away like it had burned.
Her eyes darted around—at the doors, at the window that showed the garden where they used to play. Then she decided.
"I should show you around. That's what wives who host do."
"But what about the baking?"
Becka looked back toward the abandoned bowls, at the ghost of a woman who had protected her as well as she could, which was not nearly enough. "What use is it anyway? I've been trying to remember those cookies my mother always used to bake when visitors came around. I cannot and I tried so hard."
Her voice cracked like thin ice over deep water.
"Another piece of her gone from me."
She clenched her fists. Her nailbeds dug into her skin. Hannah could see the white half-moons of pressure, could imagine the sting on her own hands.
Becka started showing her around. A house Hannah had been to multiple times during their childhood. Almost nothing had changed, but Becka pointed out what had. Tiny changes became lifelines under Becka's narration. A new cabinet. Different curtains. Fresh paint along the stairwell. She spoke as though cataloguing changes might convince herself she still belonged there.
Then they reached the upper floor.
Where the bedrooms were.
Becka pointed to the closed room that had belonged to her dead parents. "That's Garth's room."
Then she pointed to the small spare bedroom that was basically a cupboard, barely wide enough for a bed. "That's my room."
Hannah hated the satisfaction that bloomed in her chest. Knowing they had separate rooms. She had not even known that was possible for married women. But here it was, proof that even in Gilead, even under the law, Becka had found a way to keep part of herself untouched. A sanctuary the size of a grave.
Becka opened the door.
The room was very plain, with only a wooden cross above the bed. But it had a large window into the garden, which was at least something. Nature was one of the only things not completely controlled by Gilead. The trees still grew the way they wanted. The birds still mated for life or did not, and no one hanged them for it.
Hannah had a small thought, a heresy slipped between her ribs: I wonder if there are gender traitors in animals as well.
And if there were, maybe it was more natural than they were told it was.
She buried the thought deep down, shoveled dirt over the grave of her own blasphemy, pressed her palm flat against the earth and prayed for forgiveness she did not truly want.
While she was doing that—while she was trying to kill the part of herself that asked questions—Becka said, "I go into Garth's room six days each month."
She whispered the next part, "It takes five minutes each time to produce a child."
Then: "Garth is... kind. During it. It's over fast."
Agnes did not know what she meant—not really, not the full horror of it—but she was pleased that her friend did not have to do something she did not want to do for longer than she had to. She remembered going to the dentist. The way time had stretched and stretched like a throat being cut.
She was glad Becka only had five minutes.
The thought should have shamed her. It did not. Nothing shamed her anymore, not really. Just guilt that never quite curdled into repentance.
They moved to the final bedroom.
Becka's childhood bedroom.
She breathed heavily, just resting her head on the door. Not opening it yet. Hannah watched the rise and fall of her shoulders, the tremor in her hands, the way she was gathering herself like an army before a battle it could not win.
Then she pushed it open.
The room was pure white. A cot waited in the corner, crisp and clean and empty. Her room transformed into something suitable for her own child. Erased and remade. A nursery for a baby that did not exist yet.
Agnes looked at Becka wearing blue. She had always thought they would wear blue together. She had even imagined, in her secret heart, that they would wear white together. She had dreams—vivid, painful, beautiful dreams—of their wedding being at the same time. Getting married side by side. Of course men were there, dark voids with no faces, putting on rings. But they would smile at each other, sharing this moment as rings were pushed onto their fingers.
Agnes had always had such a clear vision of what both their rings would be.
And Becka's ring was not how she had wanted it to be.
She had always imagined something bigger. Something worthy of Becka. Something that caught the light and threw it back in rainbows, like the stained glass in the chapel. Something that meant forever in a way that was not about ownership but about witness—about I see you, I choose you, I will keep choosing you until the sun burns out.
Instead, Becka had this. This thin, ugly band. This brand. This leash.
He was not worthy of her.
Agnes thought of her more recent dreams. The ones where there were no men waiting for them at the aisle. Where Hannah was already there, waiting for Becka to come toward her. And she was not sedated and being forced. She was not a wife being handed over. She was free.
She wondered if Becka thought about what had happened before. The way it had felt like the world was ending and beginning at the same time because they had each other.
The words slipped out before she could bury them as well: "Do you remember what happened before..."
Becka turned to look at her. Her eyes were dark and deep and bottomless, "How could I even begin to forget."
Hannah wondered what it would be like if she had been born a man. Born a commander. She had a slight morbid amusement at the fact that she always seemed to want to marry people of a status beneath her. That marrying Becka would still be challenging as a man, no matter how desirable a match she was, but at least it would be possible.
She did not want Becka to be Garth's.
She wanted Becka to be hers.
She looked back at that ugly ring. The serpent that constricted Becka's finger. She wondered what Becka could be named if they lived in a different world. She did not like the name Rebecca MacKenzie.
No, Rebecca Osborne sounded better.
Actually, it sounded perfect.
She needed that ring off now.
She sank to one knee before she could think better of it. The floor was hard beneath her, unyielding, like everything else in this country. She stared up at Becka. She felt more hot than she had ever felt before—not the hot she had felt with Garth, that shame-flood of wanting, but something that had been burning in her chest since she was ten years old and first saw Becka laugh. A fire that no prayer could quench, no confession could extinguish.
"I would do anything for you," Hannah said.
And she pulled off the ring.
It slid free, too easy, like it had never belonged there in the first place, like it had been waiting all along for the right hands to remove it. She dropped it to the floor. It hit the white carpet with a soft sound, almost a sigh, like it was grateful to be released.
Then she held Becka's face in her hands. Her palms cupped her jaw, feeling the warm of her skin. She inched closer and Becka did the same.
Before another sin was committed, before she crossed the line she could never uncross, Hannah thought that she could not be the man to put a ring onto Becka's finger.
But she could be the woman to pull it off.
And then there was no more thinking.
There were only two starving girls left.
And finally—
finally—
they were allowed to feed.