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The Prophecy names three roles: the Prince, distinguished by his sorrow, and bearing up nobly despite it; the Girl, by her ineradicable hope; and the Cage, by, let's be honest, its anatomy and nothing else. In the divine plan you are fungible meat. There's worse things you could be, though, and it's convenient, so it's fine; and anyway, you're used to it.
At its core, past the operatic fairy-story trappings, the Prophecy's just sort of a bleak sequence: half a laundry-list of useless predictions that seem like they're just credentialing, proof of its infallibility, and half a series of arbitrary, stupid tragedies that have to happen to someone, if the world's going to be saved. That's who you are: a convenient person for arbitrary, stupid stuff to happen to, with a debt to repay and a face that doesn't show when it hurts. That's all you are. It didn't have to be you.
Catti, too mired in her baroque romantic teen drama to notice anyone else's problems, spends the morning after the festival watching old Addams Family reruns and eating ice cream (for cats). When she notices you staring through the window (courtesy of your own ugly curiosity), she stares back for a second, cheeks still mascara-stained, jaundiced eyes radioactively sour, then shuts the blinds.
She's still mad at you. Like it's your fault; like she thought superficial gestures and goth makeovers were enough to make her special to Noelle, when she still gets pissy over handholding. Catti's just a neighbor, not part of whatever she imagines Noelle's tribe is supposed to be. She's somewhere to go when Carol's at work and there's no spare key. She should get used to it. Especially if she's going to just sit there when Rudy's in intensive care.
Susie's busy today. Ralsei's renovations to Castle Town happened all at once, according to some arcane blueprint embedded in Fate itself. Susie wants to make specific changes, so she's had to direct your recruits to do it, step by careful step, dusting store windows with artificial snow and recording a homemade horror miniseries in TV Studio. Last you'd heard, she was talking Queen down from nostalgic limo explosions to an illegal fireworks show.
Ralsei said that you could help out if you liked – or that if you were especially attached to anything in particular, he'd convince Susie to tone it down, or set up a special reserve zone for her more ambitious Noelle-themed attractions, with the power of the Flower Kingdom's recruits. "It's your town, too, Kris," he said.
You told him that she could do whatever she wanted.
Rudy is, besides your mom, the one person in town that everyone would still miss if he died. Just reaching his room in intensive care (and you beeline straight for him, without examining every door twice or talking to everyone you see in the street, thank god) requires you to wind your way through a maze of repurposed festival bouquets and hope candles. Someone must've decided to string up his fairy lights, too, as if in prayer: riotously bright even against the standard-issue hospital fluorescents, like strange IV tubes. For once you're grateful for your unnatural, balletic grace; alone, without guidance, you'd probably kick a few candles over, or trip on a cord and tear the lights out of whatever overtaxed wall socket they're using.
Noelle sits on an uncomfortable visitor's chair at the corner of Rudy's care suite, head bowed low, still in her sweater-vest and skirt from yesterday, down to the rumples and the lakeside mudstains on her heels. Someone's left her a paper cup of hot chocolate on a visitor's table, between a bead chain and a newmade angel doll. You peer into it. It's untouched, and a little bit congealed like hot chocolate gets when you leave it long enough; through some accident of fate there's a single preservative-cyan petal floating on the surface, probably from the nightmare of secondhand botanicals all around the room.
"Hi, Kris."
You say hi. For once, she doesn't take it as an excuse to say more. You ask if there's been any news.
"…they're saying it might've been allergies. To, I guess, the pollen." She sniffs.
Besides your dad's obligatory roses, none of the flowers in the room are under glass.
Noelle's voice, usually regulated to an exactingly pretty soprano, comes out like a croak. "I know. Mom said it sounded like the doctor was just guessing what was wrong. Allergies don't make you… collapse in the middle of the lovers' parade." She sniffs again.
Without really meaning to, you sit down with a chair's-width to separate you, not really knowing what to say. Some stupid impulse makes you tell her that he'll be fine, though you strangle your voice to a low murmur. She's heard it a hundred times already.
"Uh-huh," she says. "Your mom said that too. She brought pie."
There's pie, all right; with the door and windows shut, she's been hotboxing Rudy in butterscotch and cinnamon until it's an offensive fug. A still-full tin sits on the floor, with a stationery note in your mom's scribbly handwriting, surrounded by candles melted down to their cores and Post-Its with encouraging notes and flowers and flowers and flowers, in defiance of Rudy's possible anaphylaxis. Funnily enough, your dad, who supplied all those premature mourning bouquets, is also gone, and in a day or two he might also be dead. As a bonus, to the rest of Hometown he's still a comically pathetic tinfoil-hat crank fixated on Prophetic errata, too pathetic for anyone to mourn. Not that you could explain why they should mourn without getting called delusional. Good for Noelle, that she has all this for her father.
Inevitably, when she raises her head, she makes her best attempt at eye contact and asks: "Did you… come alone?"
You say you did.
"Oh."
After the second Dark World, and the Ferris wheel, part of you figured that was it. Noelle had been let in on the secret, then defied a twenty-story death mecha in Susie's name; there was no way she was going to walk out of that without the confidence to talk to her, and between you and a nice, relatably-weird lesbian with a trust fund and zero boundaries, it was no contest. You'd walk straight home, eat leftovers, kill your television to advance the Prophecy's timetable, feed the Knight a cop, and only see Susie again at the end of the world; in the meantime maybe you'd wave at her in the halls, or in Castle Town, just to see how long it took before she stopped waving back.
Instead your friendship, inexplicably, went into overtime. Susie wanted it to be just the two of you in the Dark Worlds; in fact she'd lied to Noelle's face for the explicit purpose of keeping it a Kris-and-Susie thing. Some strange impulse inside you overrode your better judgment, she twisted your arm into twisting her arm, and you ran all over Hometown with her in tow, harassing the convenience store guy and coming up with stupid jokes, her smile big and jaundiced and shining.
Even then, your relationship was still pretty fragile – Susie obviously wasn't used to anyone caring about her, yet, much less her favorite victim. If you'd told her to fuck off she absolutely would've, and there were ways and means to circumvent the part of you that was pathetically happy to have company. But you didn't. And when she asked who you'd go with to the Festival, Noelle or Ralsei (one couldn't, and the other wouldn't), you told her that it had to be her, voice rough from overuse – and she agreed. In fact she seemed a little bemused you'd felt like you had to answer that way. It just went without saying.
It didn't have to be you who helped her, or fed her, or stayed with her. In fact it probably shouldn't have been, given your promise, and the gaping absence that faithfully awaited you at the story's end – frankly, your mom's household finances couldn't tolerate more than a few days' worth of extra meals. You were just lucky – or, that's the wrong word; really, you were convenient, courtesy of your part in the play, and the sad little vestigial heart inside you that soaked in her kindness like it was the sun. Anyone might've; could've; should've.
But, just for a little while, you had something that was just yours.
"At least you're here. My mom isn't even in the hospital. She's organizing trash pickup south of town. Like, l-like anyone was even allowed back there during the festival… I didn't think she actually needed excuses to not visit dad, but I guess this time is special!" There's a convulsive little sob that twists her throat; she worries her fingers at her shoulders like she's trying to give herself a hug. "Why can't she just… why does she have to be so –"
Some awful impulse compels you to say that Carol must be hurting too, though you can't make yourself sound sincere. She is, of course, for all the good it does.
"…I… I guess." Susie would've called her mom a jerk, or possibly an asshole, which would at least have been satisfying to hear. Noelle scans your face for some sign of that secondhand anger so she can feel like she's allowed to be mad, finds nothing, and retracts into herself. "…You sound like my – my dad, y'know. He always says mom's trying her best. She's just prickly, like a – like a pine tree, or a cactus. Just like Tsuntsun, faha. So if she was trying this whole t-time, it makes sense she's still not…"
Part of you thinks, now would be a good time to rip your own beating heart out, walk into Rudy's hospital room and open a vein, then shove Ralsei's hands onto his comatose body and make them pray until he's better.
Not that it can compel the rest of you; once the heart came out you'd just push it back down. Still, the force of the idea makes you squirm, and your fingers skitter ineffectually across your oversized curtain cardigan, looking for the invisible seam that lets your fingernails peel fabric as if it were skin. It's one of a variety of fun self-sabotaging ideas you've had in the past week, as your own compulsive, traitorous heart has caught up to the rest of you; Noelle seeing you now would ruin everything –
Though she'll see it soon enough, anyway. What exactly are you protecting her from, by pretending now? She's only experienced the catered, childproofed version of the Dark World, so far, where all she had to do to get her girl was wait and hope in a tower. Maybe she deserves an early taste of what's to come.
"…um. If you're cold, I can – I can ask them to turn down the AC." You shake your head, grip slack, throat taut, and she looks at you the way she's been looking at you this week, with that surprise that you have even vague approximations of real feelings. "Okay."
It feels like you used to know – well, let's be honest, you never knew how to talk to Noelle. But you used to at least be consistently wrong.
You wait.
"Kris, um."
You wait.
"Do you have Susie's number…?"
She's in Castle Town, so she's – you say "Not reachable," one of those mealy-mouthed ambiguous things you've had to rely on.
Noelle tilts her head at you. "You mean, she doesn't have service?" Or a phone, which you could admit, but the idea's come and gone already and you've registered your answer. "Even if the internet's down, I've been able to get calls from Jockington and Berdly, and – most of the class. Catti's… still being weird."
You say she's at home watching reruns of The Addams Family and eating ice cream (for cats).
"Oh."
And Susie lives in the Waterfall Estates apartment complex, but you don't know which apartment.
"…is she there?"
It was only a little painful to see her out in the water – dyed orange-pink by the sunset with Noelle in her arms – before you resigned yourself to your position and collapsed back into the picnic table. After all, you were used to it. Like how she gripped Ralsei's collar in front of that Sanctuary window, grinding statue fragments beneath her boots, while you stayed out of reach, in a deeper shadow. Just like when she'd stood up to tell Tenna he didn't have to take being thrown away – no dramatic spotlight for you; you had nothing to say. Like when she'd made pie with your mom while you skulked outside, so much easier to take care of than you've ever been. You'd gotten as close as you were allowed.
But wasn't it fine? Your heartbeat couldn't accelerate to match hers, and she couldn't save you, but you had something better. For all that she shone she was still, in some ways, brittle; she'd needed your shield to catch the statue's tempered clavier hammer, and she'd needed you for King's idiotic last-ditch gambit. So what if she'd never carry you? You didn't need her to carry your weight, like Noelle or Ralsei did. If she hadn't noticed your limp you would've walked the length of the Sanctuary with a leg full of luminescent Prophecy glass for her; it was only one misstep that stopped you, and her kindness, rough palms shining bright.
It could've been anyone. By now you've worked out how badly she's been starved of friendship, and how much she's ready to overlook to keep it; without that neediness clouding her vision she'd have figured you out ages ago. But it was you there with her at the start, when everyone else treated her like a wounded animal, before she shone. It was you who decided to extend a hand to her, and you who kept deciding. In darkness, in Castle Town, even in the stupid little instant of hesitation while she slept on your couch and you readied the knife – you were her armor, her beacon, her sword, her friend, her home, you wanted so badly to be home to her, unbound by any promises, facing fate by her side, and it was yours and hers to live in, that eternity in her head, that story without an ending that looped in on itself, that wordless understanding from when you sat at the lake and breathed in the cool air and almost told her, it couldn't be anyone else, it had to be –
All through the Flower Kingdom there were little reminders of the outside, the world where you were yourself and your future was what it was, seeping through the curtain of darkness you'd put up. All the Seven-Colored Flowers knew. It was just obvious. Even there, in a fantasy that was just yours and hers, in the depths of the darkness, that lakeside sunset followed you, an omen on loop, sun after sun after sun.
"You know… Susie… she made me feel like everything would work out, even if it was only for a minute."
She's good at that. Without anything changing at all, she can make you believe you'll be alright as you are, and that a thirty-minute diner not-a-date can extend into eternity. You agree.
"I don't want to just… wait here. Dad's holding on alright, and I won't do anyone any good just…"
If you waved a hand in front of Noelle's face, right now, you'd half-expect her not to track it with her eyes. She's fixated on some distant point, and it lies through you, at best. "Kris, I know… you're her friend. The… Susie expert, right?"
You are.
"It's alright if she doesn't know what to say yet. I just want to see her. So…"
So.
"Won't you… show me where to go?"
You say, not ready. It's even true. Castle Town's not ready to receive her yet; the ice-skating rink will take at least a few more hours. Part of you reminds you that you still need to get up and go visit everyone you skipped past to get here, i.e., the convenience store guy and QC and that sphinx who thinks your dad's a serial killer. Even if it's early and the streets are mostly clear of people. You rise to your feet.
"Not ready…? I… Kris, I'm sorry if you're busy, but… I don't want to wait. I could come along, if you have to finish up any, um, errands first."
Again, you say, not ready.
"What's not ready? I – even if Susie has some kind of plan, it's fine. I don't need a… surprise, or whatever…" Her giggle is ugly, too, froggish and unrehearsed, the kind that tells you she's had a bad thought she can't make herself ignore. "Faha, and e-even you wouldn't try to prank me right now, right?"
Undoubtedly, there's a version of you who would apologize, now, and walk Noelle to school. Maybe slowly, maybe circuitously – obedient to your impulse to check and recheck every single landmark in Hometown, just in case they've changed overnight. Like you've found yourself doing with Susie, in every Dark World, seeing it all secondhand through her eyes. You could do that for Noelle. Just give her exactly what she wants, because it's already hers, because she waited and hoped and was chosen. There's a version of you who wants to.
But you're not ready.
You say not ready.
"Kris, I heard you the first –"
You say not ready.
"Why are you…"
Not ready.
"Kris? Kris, you're… you're shaking…"
You shut your eyes tightly and think about Susie and part of you projects a vision of Castle Town covered in tinsel and artificial snow against the black of your eyelids, and you try to breathe around the absence, that frigid December numbness that steals over you, but your heart slams back, hard, and the perfect, rarefied image – complete and ready to receive Noelle, down to the entire stupid ice-skating rink that's replaced the cafe – distorts into nothing, and part of you forces your eyes open again and floods your system with heat. "Kris!" Noelle's looking at you, finally, and she sounds afraid, "Kris what's wrong you have to tell me –"
"Not ready," you say, and try to shut your eyes and think about Susie, doing a last-minute walk-through with Ralsei, but the picture won't form, and that vestigial heart lurches sickeningly inside your chest, disobedient, forcing you back. Part of you tells you to show Noelle Castle Town. Noelle joins your party, but you're alone, aren't you, there's no party. It isn't your Castle Town any more, so it's not yours to give away, is it? You won't lead her. Part of you tells you to show Noelle Castle Town, because it'll make her happy. Your legs feel like lead. You try to sit down. You can't sit down. Susie will come soon. Susie will show her. You don't want to see. You don't want to see. You'll lose her anyway, you lost her anyway, so –
For just a few days, you had something that no one could take away.
It didn't have to be you, carrying out fate with your cheap foldable knife. But you took away the one person that Noelle needed more than anything, so you made a promise, and more promises afterwards. Because Noelle's fragile. Because Noelle's life was over, with Carol calcified into this and Rudy's ever-more-frequent health scares indicating an inevitable, miserable end, and you owed her, and you had nothing to sacrifice but yourself, a cut-rate version of Dess, insufficient compensation.
Everything that was even vaguely personal, you donated, or buried, or burned. On Carol's advice, of course – any Darkner that was yours might spill your secrets once the prophesied Girl arrived, and give the game away – but it was proof of your commitment, too, not just practical. Proof you would do anything for Noelle, for the person you'd taken from her, for the life she was supposed to live. Because you could do it. You could give up anything. You could give up everything. You promised.
And now, all week, you've been play-acting noble abnegation, pretending you'll cut Susie off with zero intention of following through – procrastinating, really, begging five more minutes, letting yourself believe she needed you for just another day and just another Dark World, as if she wouldn't find someone better the instant she tried. Now fate's confiscated your toy, and donated her to a loving new household where they'll treat her nicely, and when the end of the story comes it'll be clean and you'll go out alone. You've been relieved of your only remaining burden. Aren't you lucky it doesn't have to be you?
Without trying, now, Noelle's taken away – more than your love, really. Even your hope belongs to her, your reason to move on without surrendering to the bleak sequence of fate, without closing your eyes and sleepwalking through the Prophecy. The thought that, even if you were drowning, even if you were always supposed to drown, you could kick and thrash and struggle upwards against the undertow, death grip around a rough hand not so different from yours, and try to breach the surface, and hope that at least Susie could manage a single, half-dead breath, and then another, and maybe she'd survive past the end of the story and maybe she'd grip your hand back and she'd smile at you and you'd remember in the aphotic deep what it was like to see the sun.
And now Susie's swimming fine, and fresh air is very far away, and the sun is a cold round dot distorted by the water, and Noelle is looking at you with tears beading at the corners of her eyes, as if she hasn't already won.
It's funny, isn't it?
The person you needed more than anything is hers, now.
You're even.