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neither of them say anything for the entire walk back to the orphanage. there is only snow crunching like bones and splintered crimson in her footprints. high shadows wheel on the trees above them, carrion birds tracing the trail of a predator. she pays them little mind. crows and vultures always follow wolves, but they know better than to get too close.
her energy is better spent elsewhere. watching the trees, listening for the echo of gunfire, counting the seconds between each round and the next. they come in patterns of six, more easily distinguished now that the fight is drawing to its conclusion. the enemy doesn't seem to be particularly skilled, either; all that firepower, and still couldn't take out one person. although that's on brand for these mercenaries. she still hears their mother's rifle going off periodically, if there was any doubt that she could crush these pathetic excuses for soldiers.
doors open and rooms pass and none of it matters. the bronya detects no further danger. they wander the garden of forking paths, endless and vast and utterly meaningless. if there is no sound, there is no memory, and she hears nothing. not even the whisper of mice.
she doesn't even realize she's spoken until she tastes the echo of her voice on the wall, saying, “seele should rest.”
first thing she's said since they left that damn building. of course, it's for seele. most days she barely speaks, but to her or for her.
“if… if it's okay, i think i’d like to stay with you. i won't look. promise.” seele offers her pinky, a pointless gesture.
the bronya meets her, if only to give her some shred of happiness in this shitstorm. something solid to hold onto despite it all. maybe this will keep everything that's happened at bay, somehow. please.
so seele turns around– not like it matters– and she sheds her clothes. her shirt will be stained beyond repair, but her skirt isn't so bad. and she's missing a sock, but there's nothing to do about that. there is still use for it, she's sure. a sock is a sock.
the water is shockingly warm around her ankles. she had anticipated it to be cold, like it always has been. a river of melting snow. new growth along the edges of the bank. she supposes it's stupid of her to be surprised, since she's the one who drew the bath in the first place. now is not then, and it's pointless to remember.
sinking in, the water splashes and ripples around her, subsuming her once more and easing her back down. into the river. it's a warm river, isn't it? bit too warm. her clammy, icy skin is already beginning to flush.
she won't linger, then. she shouldn't linger anyway, because they have better things to do.
a thin crust grows like a second skin over her body, pointed, dark red covering her still. with defanged, harmless teeth, the water bites at her. it can't undo this. nothing can.
she pauses to take in her reflection as she reaches for the washcloth. that dirty color remains, beaded in her hair and dried around her mouth. it's the only crown she'll ever wear; she is no king and no martyr, nothing worthy of remembrance or worship. nothing valued is here. everything that lies here is repulsive to us.
her face is the first thing she scrubs.
and she scrubs until her skin is raw and burned, until she feels her eyes starting to squint and her cheeks swelling up. that's when she's knows she's truly clean. make it count. who knows when the next time she'll get to bathe will be.
unsettling, eerie quiet falls over them. she might even forget seele's there at all, for the way she barely dares to breathe– as if the silence is not an absence, but a presence. something overwhelming, everlasting, something with horrible teeth and an awful, blood rotted body.
don't ask the question. don't. she already knows the answer, she already knows who has so callously invaded this space.
the reflection stares at her, still.
wet fabric slides over her skin. it's worse when the rags are soft, like the suffocating blankets that adorn the orphanage’s beds. but these are of the same cloth as towels, rough enough to leave her skin tingling instead of itching. they don't scratch deep enough to get rid of the blood, but nothing will. there's nothing in the world that could make her pure again.
harbinger of destruction. how ironic, that crows should follow in her shadow, when they never asked for a burden so heavy. the way people see them was never their fault– they can't help needing to feed on carrion or scavenge corpses.
despite her best efforts, she glances over her shoulder.
seele is still there. looking away from her.
only a few more minutes of scrubbing passes before she loses to the impulse again and looks. and again. and again.
this is ridiculous. she's better than this; she's supposed to be, at least. there's no reason for any of it, some unfounded disease of the mind that overrides all her training. she'd hear something if anyone came in. she'd hear it if seele moved. she'd hear it if seele left.
but she still looks. and eventually she gives up, watching the girl over her shoulder as she finishes her washing.
there's a thousand and some things she could say. not very many that she should. her presence is enough of a wound, enough of a mark, enough of a burden. she doesn't have any right to make it worse. seele is a saint for tolerating her so, for letting the bronya ruin and destroy and desecrate her life.
all of this is only further proof.
“... seele?” her call is quiet, as if that makes it any less selfish.
the girl does not answer. she always answers.
“seele.” more certain, more solid, more sure. it's no longer her tentative desire that drives this exchange, fleeting and bleeding and wrong, but a deficit in her approach.
there's a gulf between them that no bridge could cross, both of them more mountains than girls. the bronya looks to her over the ocean of blood that now fills the bathtub, and finds her eyes tinged by its sheen. is it some trick of the light, that her glassy, far-away gaze is stained crimson?
a poet would say that it's the pain of the day bleeding through her gaze. the books their mother gives them say that the eyes are the window to the soul.
her hands grip the old plastic of the bathtub rim and she leans out; not too far, she keeps her weight in her heels and refuses to trust. a soul is an abstract concept. “soul” is something poets made up to ease themselves of death. there is only the body and nothing more, for the brain is an organ and she can kill it. and if souls are real, then they are beasts that thrum under the palms and twist around fingertips.
it's good that she is not a poet. none of that nonsense is helpful in the slightest.
insistent, she calls, “seele.”
she can't let seele lose herself in her mind and despair. that's all that will come of this silence– some part of her, buried underneath roots and mud and dead branches, knows this truth pulsing under its blood, but the larger part of her understands it through clinical whites and placid blues– for this is not strategizing or planning. it is thinking, aimless and circular, and finally seele looks at her.
“... sorry?” seele whispers, and the bronya glosses right over the tears in her voice.
“would seele mind helping the bronya?”
she blinks a few times. her irises are a vast, endless blue, the way they have always been. it must be the bronya's tired eyes, or the tearful red around her whites.
“no, of course i don't mind. what do you need?”
pulling back into the confines of the tub, she settles with her back to the room again. carefully, she draws her hair over her shoulder. the soaked strands latch onto her skin and pull, sliding rather uncomfortably. tolerable, but not pleasant. that is always how these things go, isn't it?
“the bronya can't reach her back. can seele wash it for her, please?” it's not quite the truth. she can't reach, yes, but she's capable of washing her back on her own. not well, but passably. tolerably. she has always done it alone.
something tactile like this will help ground her. something not too difficult, but not entirely mindless. after a traumatic event, it's important to keep the brain occupied. it might cause further distress, otherwise.
the bronya cannot fail her again.
“yeah, o-of course.” she murmurs, delicately picking up the washcloth.
her motions are gentle, so unlike the bronya's own that her skin doesn't understand what to do with itself. tingling pins bounce under the rag, fuzzing like static or hissing like steam. this feeling is almost pain, but not quite there. it balances, clumsily, on that knife's edge. her weight shifts, and she wobbles.
too big for this space, and too small to fit anywhere else. she has always been tiny and insignificant, but here, her shoulders catch on every doorframe and her hands crush everything that is held dear. a small fish in an even smaller pond, maybe. before, there was always the risk of being eaten. there's always a bigger fish, after all, and she was the smallest. now, she is safe. the crushing fit should not bother her, it shouldn't matter that the walls hold her tight as she tries to swim or that the water is far too shallow. this is something she must be grateful for.
suffocating in safety is better than fighting for survival. she's supposed to know that.
that doesn't ease the fangs that gnaw at her night and day, mangling her at her most vulnerable. they taste blood on the waters; they know. and they show no mercy, not to things like her. she isn't deserving of it.
she shifts, just slightly, and seele is crushed under her weight.
“what is it?” the bronya tries not to make it sound so accusatory, but there's blood between her teeth still.
soft, tender hands ghost over her back, and seele's palms catch on her ragged skin. it never seems to get smooth. even when all the grime is scrubbed away, the texture of it lingers. that can't be very pleasant to touch.
“your scars… i never realized you had so many.” her whisper is feather-light.
“does–” she stumbles, stupidly– “do they scare seele?”
“no. no, i’d never be afraid of you.” and that's not true, but something under her ribcage aches for it.
she remembers the way seele looked at her, then. somehow staring right past her and into the depths of whatever soul she has left, her eyes had held such tangible emotion that it made her guts churn. maggots had made themselves known in the putrid, impure flesh of her self, endlessly twisting and writhing and wriggling. they burrow into her even now.
it was fear in her eyes. raw and animal, scraped out with blade and bullet and bare fists.
in its wake, she'd only been able to console her with a promise. never again, she'll never scare seele again. never again will she hurt another for seele's sake. never.
the bronya's grip on her knees tightens.
brutality and violence is in her blood, her bones, her skin– it's everything useful about her, everything that makes her who she is. without the teeth in her gums, she is nothing. she'll just be incomplete and broken again, with nothing to keep her together. if souls are real, then hers is held together by duct tape and rusted nails. she's not sure that promise is one she'll be able to keep, when something like this happens again.
it will happen again. it always does. nowhere is truly safe, she knows that well.
can seele forgive her?
“it's just… sad, i guess. i wish that hadn't happened to you.” she murmurs, leaning in so close that her breath is warm on the bronya's skin.
it doesn't matter. she pushes the question away. it's not her place to expect or even to ask for forgiveness, for she has done nothing to earn it.
“it's okay.” her answer is equally as soft. “the bronya survived, and her scars are proof of her strength. seele doesn't need to feel bad.”
she has done nothing to earn her pity. this is just the way of things; war leaves wounds, in the ground it's fought on and in the bodies it's fought by. it's an effective teacher, but a cruel parent.
and she's quiet for a long moment. contemplating. thinking. and the bronya fears that she has done some wrong, made some horrible transgression that she hasn't understood. silence is a guillotine that looms over her neck. there's no way to be sure if it's good or bad, if she has done wrong or not, if she will make it out. she can't even look up at the blade for confirmation that it's really there. she just has to hope that it isn't.
“i wish we could just be kids.” seele's admission is dangerously heavy, hanging in the still air and settling over both their shoulders.
for that moment, the scars slip away. the training slips away. the bronya slips away. it's just her and seele, in a bathroom that doesn't smell like blood, with rubber ducks that haven't had their past lives scalded off them, in a house that has never known war, young and unaware and free. free. they've never been anything but children. and maybe there are bad people out there, but they've never met them, and they won't for a while. the seconds pass and she has no need to count them. footsteps sound down the hall and she can ignore them. she doesn't need to lock the door. the bathtub is filled with bubbly, soapy water, the way their laughter fills the room.
wishing is stupid. nothing ever comes of it, save for disappointment. wishing is the antithesis to working, and it makes people soft.
the absence aches.
it's the only thing that matters anymore.
“... yeah.”
neither of them say anything, not for the entire trek home. home. some stupid, poet's word. something soft and warm and entirely unnecessary. two girls enter a house and it is not a home. maybe it never was.
this thing that has mutated in their absence, this building, this threat. dark and empty, the house is all eye sockets where there should never have been eyes. the ceilings are too high and the floors are jagged under her feet. she can feel them even through her boots, as clearly as if the rubber soles were her own paws. feet. people have feet, don't they? are you a real person? do you deserve to be?
she is tracking blood all over the house. that's not something she can help– it's too late to be clean. the bronya might never be clean again.
that's her burden to bear. kiana is fresh powder after a blizzard, still, high upon a mountaintop where nothing can reach. if one of them must carry this, she is glad it's her. how traumatic, for kiana, this would be. to be covered in blood and viscera and human flesh, of her own choice. to be something monstrous, and not even realize. at least the bronya has always known. she is under no delusions when she looks in the mirror; the face of a soldier always looks back at her. that is how it has always been. this is how it will always be.
a smaller room, now. the bathroom. kiana follows her, wordlessly, almost mindlessly. there is nothing to be said, and so neither of them speak.
a crusty brown powder flakes off her clothes and shatters on the tile. funny, isn't it? this whole time, she's been longing for snow, for cold, for simplicity. who knew she'd find it like this? old blood, hot snow on the icy bathroom floor. there's nothing more simple than this destruction. she was made for it.
that almost gets her to laugh.
she sinks down, down into the river. only in the summer, has it been a river, for in any other season the water was cold enough to kill. but the first was a river. and so every bathtub and pond and pool is a river, and that is the way of it. isn't it odd, how she remembers the bath, but not the kill? the mission fades into obscurity, the words exchanged and the blood on her hands and the soft scattering of casings in the snow are lost in a sea of monotony, but the aftermath stays. it stains her memories, like ink bleeding through wet paper.
you are alone. always. she has shed her skin and she is exposed and she is blood vessels in the open air, and there is no one here who cares. they see you and their eyes are unseeing. she is not something worth looking at. there is only more blood underneath that which she washes away. a grotesque caricature of a human being, that's all she is. distorted. broken. wrong.
kiana's eye sockets are trailing empty nerves. some fog has overtaken her, and she too, is unseeing.
bodies are just that. dead ones or living ones, it makes little difference. the line between the two is razor thin, anyway, a matter of minutes under a skilled hand like hers.
pale, washed out red tendrils make their way through the water. the sight of them is almost comforting. or at least, familiar. old habits die hard, don't they? this water won't be so clear in a few moments.
“did you know,” kiana stares aimlessly at the wall and sees only the fallout of her brutality, “that mother crocodiles carry their young in their mouths?”
awkward and stilted as it is, her attempt is valiant. she grasps for some shred of normalcy, and the bronya would be cruel to deny her of it.
“she did not know that.”
it doesn't really matter if she knew that before or not, does it? she knows it now, and the space between them has shifted just a little bit to the left. the past is dead and the future is never guaranteed and only the present matters.
“yeah, that's because you're a fucking idiot. everyone knows that.” her voice is a snail shell crushed onto the pavement; all of her insults lack teeth.
“how should the bronya know that? she has never seen a crocodile before.” fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you–
“maybe if you paid attention in school you'd know that.”
for a moment, she thinks she hates you. hates this, hates kiana, hates everything. her body is filled with crushed stars and shrapnel, some kind of pincushion or punching bag. why do we do this? why does she still try?
nothing will ever be good enough. there's no point in this. none of you will ever be satisfied, will you?
well, fuck off.
she scrubs her skin until she feels it break, and rakes her claws over the wound. her blood is indistinguishable from the rest of it. it's all the same. it's always been the same.
a tiny, unidentifiable bit of flesh drifts past her knee, and the anger falls away just as suddenly as it began. it leaves ash and exhaustion swirling in its wake, as it always does. the hotter something burns, the faster it burns out. stars don't shine forever.
one day she'll be pulverized flesh floating in a bathtub too. there is no grace or honor here.
kiana should be careful. the bronya should get the rest of this mess off of her. it's starting to itch.
and blood is a second skin. it clings to her desperately, pleading for just one more moment, but it will take far more than that. it will take everything she has, and it will take it over and over and over again. maybe she should let it. take these memories, that have come crawling from their wooden tombs, and drown them in sickening red. that would be easier, she knows.
dragging her nails over her shoulder, she feels the film tear under her claws. it's… cathartic. finally ridding herself of clothes that sit too tightly, stretching out again after lying curled up, filling that ache in her hands with metal and fire. there's an itch, deeper still, that demands to be scratched, and who is she to ignore it?
so she scratches. again and again and again, each one quicker than the last, more frantic, more desperate. despite her resignation to it, being dirty is one of her least tolerable sensations. it's irrational and it's privileged, but she kind of hates it. kind of hates the way despair so easily drags her down into thinking she'll never be clean again. it's not true. it's not. please.
sweat beads on her neck and it only worsens the crawling under her skin. if she looked down at her hands and found them pulsing, with maggots barely restrained under her skin, she couldn't find surprise or horror within her. but she doesn't look. can't bring herself to. she just works herself as if it's true, as though she's seen it and tasted the stain. as if this is the last bath she'll ever take, and she's got to make it count.
stale, crusted flakes scatter the surface of the river; its waters are stained with her impurity.
out, out, get it out.
a hand closes around her wrist. she becomes aware of herself again– as some kind of human, and not as a stain.
her shoulders are trembling. her sides are heaving. her teeth are bared. under her skin, even her ribcage flies wild and undone. she's supposed to be steady. knowing that doesn't make stuffing the panicked animal of her body back into its cage any easier, and as the number of bite wounds climbs ever higher she curses whoever left the door unlocked.
“bronya.” calm, kiana is so calm, much more so than she's ever seen her. “you're hurting yourself.”
oh. she is, isn't she?
stinging pain makes itself known all over her body in raised welts and bloody claw marks. her sides shudder under the weight, sagging with the sudden realization. did the nagging bite begin with the wound, or when she first felt it? stupid question. it doesn't matter and she can't remember. a thousand teeth tearing at her skin, and maybe she really is a wild animal.
slowly, like moving through frozen flesh, kiana reaches into the blood-soaked river. and when her hand resurfaces, she is holding not a severed limb, but the bathtub stopper. the solid, unknowable water drains out lethargically, and they wait in the abstract.
what is time? what is pain? where does the soul live, really? i bring only a burden upon you. humanity, mankind, it is dead at my hands.
if i have a soul, i need you to euthanize it. would kiana kill her, if she asked? she could never ask that of her. she could never taint her hands like that, could never allow her corruption to spread so far. she'd have to do it herself. it would be easy to turn her brutality inwards. if hell is real, it's full of people like her.
blood circles the drain. it's the fuel that drives everything, isn't it? war and peace and life and death and greed and charity. emotions are felt in the blood. pain is felt in the blood. there are worms and grubs crawling throughout hers, she feels their writhing with pinpoint clarity and can't make it stop. stop moving. stop, make it stop.
each tap of their tiny legs is nauseating; there are hundreds upon hundreds of them coursing through the chambers of her blood vessels. make it stop. she presses her wrists back against the wall of the bathtub and pins them with her back. the roar dulls to a growl. ice helps somewhat.
hot water, hot enough to steam, hot enough to sear the skin on her toes, pours into the tub once more. this time, it's clean. it won't be for long.
“make it cold. please.” she already has everything and yet she can't stop herself from needing more. she remains unsatiated. her kind know nothing but hunger.
kiana, foolishly, does.
bugs are supposed to die in the winter. the cold is inhospitable to them, to most things, but they thrive in the shallow river. as they buzz to life once more, she shifts her legs until they lie flat under the water in hopes that they'll drown. they don't, of course. why would anything ever get better for her? her crime is existence.
the only way to be rid of them is to claw them out, piece by wretched piece.
and she tries. she wants so badly to ignore them. it's unbearable. there's no way to look away, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. the stain is inside her, still, and everything must be purged.
“c'mon, knock that off.” kiana's hand chases her own, trying to swat her claws away from bare skin.
don't you think she's trying? clearly, not hard enough.
“she–” she trips over nothing and her voice shatters.
from the start, she has been wrong. always. and they have always known. they always know. your actions are repulsive even to us, only tolerated so long as you are useful. her luck won't last much longer; it never does. luck isn't worth relying on, anyway, it won't get her anywhere but a grave.
soft hands pull her close. they're different than she remembers, sharper and rougher and larger, but still tender. even with the cracked callouses on the heels of her hands, her touch is gentle. for all her jabs and taunts, kiana cares.
it bleeds from her, that kindness. it'll get her killed some day.
but not yet. water spills across her clothes and surely some of the grime does too, but kiana could care less. knowing the outcome, knowing the end, it won't change her mind. nothing will. she's too stubborn for that– too stupid, if the bronya had the wits to tease her– and despite it all, she trusts. trusts in people, trusts in goodness, trusts in the world. senselessly. her faith is pointless.
so is wishing, though. and the bronya has done that before.
so maybe, when kiana whispers to her so tenderly, as if she's never been anything but a scared, lost child, saying, “it's okay. it's okay. you're safe here.”
maybe some small part of bronya can believe her.