Chapter Text
Despite living in what was basically hell, Susie still found things that made her smile feel a little less forced. There was the Legion, of course; every second spent with her favourite people made her happier than reason could account for. She made time to make art, with the Realms providing an endless supply of sketchbooks, pencils, and paint of all kinds. She made her own clothing, adorned with bright colours and joyful images based on her happiest thoughts. If she was really bored, she could always add to her collection of handmade weapons; it was easy and relaxing to sharpen a piece of wood into a stake, and just plain fun to pretty it up with artful carvings and sparkly add-ons. She’d once glued a bunch of plastic gemstones to a knife that Julie had given her, trying to imitate the legit antique dagger that Julie herself had stolen before… all of this.
But even when Susie wasn’t doing anything, she still found things that made her happy. Just sitting on a couch with the rest of the Legion, or looking at Julie, or falling asleep in their Realm knowing her asshole parents could never hurt her again, or looking at Julie, or admiring her ever-growing collection of knick-knacks, or looking at Julie… There were plenty of little things that, just for a moment, brought a real smile to Susie’s face just by virtue of their reality and presence.
The graffiti she was staring at was one such instance.
She was waiting out the final seconds before her next trial. Normally, moments like these were agony – the Entity preferred to split up the Legion for the trials, separating them until the bloody game was finished and they all reunited back at the old lodge. Susie hated it, hated every second she was apart from the Legion, hated being alone. She’d gotten good at channeling that hate into the trials – the quicker her slaughter, the sooner the relief of reunion came. But in the moments before a trial started, she had very little to distract herself from her momentary isolation.
Not this time. The trial was taking place in a Realm she’d never seen before – some scrap of an American town surrounded by woods and distorted by the Entity’s strange whimsy. Susie was made to wait in a square, dominated by a statue of some people in old-timey clothing. Whoever it depicted was a mystery to Susie, the plaque explaining it warped and illegible, too insignificant for the Entity to bother reconstructing. What was legible was a much newer addition: a pair of names written in black lipstick near the bottom of the statue’s plinth.
Mikaela + Sable
It was partially obscured by an overgrown hedge, but Susie had quickly torn out the offending branches to get an unobstructed look at the words. She’d even taken off her mask. After all, the trial hadn’t started yet: nobody was around to see her, and for once her smile wasn’t forced. How could it be, when she was looking at a stamped proof of existence, just like how Frank carved his name on the walls of any place he stayed for more than one night. Just like the Legion’s earliest acts of mischief. It had all started as fun, unignorable ways to prove to the world that they existed. It was always more fun back then…
Susie’s smile began to ache at the corners.
This graffiti didn’t have the same permanence as Frank’s carvings, or even of the painted tags Susie herself threw up. But the intimacy of its medium – not chalk or ink, but lipstick – made Susie’s cheeks feel warm and bright. She couldn’t help but reach out and touch the edges of the letters, imagining the girls those two names belonged to. At least, she hoped they were both girls…
Ȳ̨o̩u̪͘͏ ̖́l̝i̶t͜t͒l̙̇ę͝ ͑p̥̎ȩ̴̙r̨v̛ë̩r̛̠̗t̢̪̝͑̇.̤̅
Susie pulled her hand back as if the lipstick letters had burned her.
W̶̞͑h̆a̶t̩ ̫́w̅͜o̙̥u̡ld̑ ̴̅tḩ̝̗é̠̀ ̈o̧̗t͞hĕ̕ŗ̖̐̿s̠͒ ̍̑t̨̬hìņ̶̤̇̑k̶?̈
What the fuck was she doing, fantasizing about some other girls and how cutesy they were together? Fuck, why should they have what was always out of reach for Susie? It wasn’t fair, it was sick and cruel and gross and—
Before she really knew what she was doing, there was a spraycan in her hands. She held it up to a bare patch beside the lipstick memento.
Her lips felt sore as her smile stretched. She pulled her mask back down over her face. Then she painted. The job was quick, the message simple, but she still made the lettering as artful as she could. In scandalous red paint and a jagged, angry font, Susie wrote a single word beside the two names.
Dykes
She painted two arrows pointing from the slur to each name, and added some cutesy little hearts and vomiting faces to really light up the whole thing.
She stuffed the spraycan back in her pocket, then stood up and stepped back to admire her work. Even through her mask, it was good shit. Stood out. Refused to be ignored. Proved to the world that Mikaela and Sable, whoever they were, deserved every cruelty the Entity could throw at them.
Susie’s cheeks ached with her smile.
I̜̗͂͜t'̜͂s̫͞ ̬t̜īm̍͞ë̘͂͝.̝̜͝
There was a shift in the air, as if the world was gasping after holding its breath for too long. Susie felt the Entity’s presence adjust as the fog around her thinned.
The trial had begun.
Susie gripped her homemade stake and grinned. Time to blow off some fucking steam.
The Legion had perfected their hunting tactics, but each of them had their own personal flair to it. Frank was brutal and violent, mercilessly crushing his prey’s escape attempts with relentless aggression. Julie preferred toying with her victims, letting them think they had gotten the upper hand before cutting them down. Joey was methodical, drawing out his trials into skillful tracking exercises. And Susie?
Susie went fucking crazy.
She never stopped running, never stopped hunting, and never gave up a chase until she’d left her target with a wound. Even then, she only sprinted off to her next target, and the next, leaving them all with bloody little love-taps before circling back to finish the job. She gave no chances for her victims to rest. She left them panicked and wounded, always expecting her to pounce from behind every corner. More often than not, her quarry were too busy just staunching their bleeding to make any real progress escaping.
And by the time they’d mended their wounds, Susie was on them again.
It was a thoughtless pattern that she easily fell into – a pattern that was well underway in this trial. She’d run a mad sprint around and through the warped theater, gouging her stake into every last victim, their faces senseless blurs in her eyes. Now utterly lost in the mind-numbing frenzy, she was circling back to one of her first victims of the night. She’d catch them just as they were about to recover, throw them on a hook, then start her manic sprint all over again. Trees and bushes whipped past Susie as she ran, makeshift stake held high, its decorations glittering as she blew past a streetlight.
Her chase brought her to the old statue again, where she’d started the trial. Her poor victim was hunched low at its base, moving her hands over— Susie didn’t think, didn’t analyze, she only ran and stabbed, right into the stranger’s back. They were moaning on the ground before they knew what hit them.
Susie took a moment to catch her breath, adrenaline screaming between her ears. She bent down to scoop her victim over her shoulder, but paused as her gaze came level with the graffiti that had captivated her mere minutes ago.
There was a new addition.
Scribbled under Susie’s one-word insult was a response, written in the same black lipstick as the original message.
Yes, and?
Susie’s smile burned beneath her mask. It was clever and brave, not denying but accepting the accusation and daring something worse. It was fearless. It was honest. It reminded Susie of how Julie never hid her rage from the world, wearing all the darkest parts of herself like they were badges of honour.
The person on the ground whimpered, pulling Susie’s attention back. Only now did she realize her victim was a girl, maybe around the same age as the rest of the Legion. Maybe a little older. Her platinum hair was dyed with violet tips, she wore a goth dress that demanded attention, and her lips were painted with… black lipstick.
Susie narrowed her eyes. Had this girl really…?
She hefted her onto her shoulder, and something fell out of her limp hand, clattering onto the pavement. It was a tube of black lipstick, open and extended and a perfect match for both the makeup on the girl’s face and the writing on the statue’s plinth.
Susie turned her masked face to the girl squirming in her grasp. What kind of moron took the time to write a (genius and daring) response to a graffitied insult in the middle of a life-or-death chase?
This weirdo, apparently.
Finally rising to her feet, Susie wasted no time carrying her victim to the nearest hook. Conveniently, there was one just across the square, looking directly at the conversational vandalism the two had shared.
Susie threw the goth girl onto the hook. It was a well-practiced motion, turned into a thoughtless habit over the course of countless trials; a step in a dance, whose next step was to run off and start another frenzied chase.
But this time, Susie lingered.
She lingered, and the girl screamed on the hook.
It was like something cold and wet pierced Susie’s heart.
Did her victims always scream like that? Did they all fall limp like that, too overwhelmed by the pain? Did their cries always turn to whimpers, like anything more was just too much to manage? And why was this the first time Susie had ever asked herself these questions?
She turned back to their written conversation. The goth girl’s lipstick tube glinted on the pavement. Susie wandered over and picked it up. It was a decent brand – the kind of stuff she and Julie would have stolen back in the early days of the Legion. She eased into her smile as she slipped it into her pocket, soothed by the pettiness of the crime.
“Creep.”
She flinched at the word, turning back to her hooked victim. Despite the obvious agony of hanging from a rusty meathook shoved through her shoulder, the girl had a fiery glare trained on Susie. Her teeth were grit and bared, and it was hard to say whether it was to express her pain or her fury.
Susie hissed back. What, just because she liked the girl’s lipstick, because she felt good taking things she liked, because she was just as stuck in these damn trials as everyone else, she was some deviant? Fuck this girl, what right did she have to—
“You a prude or something?” the girl seethed.
Susie blinked behind her mask. Prude? What did she… oh.
She brought her gaze back to the conversation defacing the plinth. Once again, it reminded Susie of the Legion’s early antics: harmless declarations of their existence; fun borne of chaos and friendship, earning immortality through baffled newspaper headlines. Vandalism and graffiti had always been Susie’s favourite items on the Legion’s weekly Mischief List, and it had been so long since she’d shared it with anyone that she’d almost forgotten how fun it was.
Until this goth girl risked life and limb to scribble a response in the middle of Susie’s murderous rampage. A response to a slur Susie had written out of… what? Jealousy?
Her lips worried around her smile, the sharp texture of her braces digging into them. “Are you Mikaela or Sable?” she asked without facing the girl.
“Die wondering,” was her answer.
Fair enough. Susie had stabbed her twice before hanging her from a meathook. And called her… a dyke… Susie wouldn’t feel too conversational either, if she were in her shoes.
Yet they had written to each other, in a way. Even if Susie’s only contribution was… that word.
…
What the fuck was wrong with her?
Susie knelt in front of their graffitied exchange, her focus on the slur she’d rendered in bright and artful red paint. It was loud and angry, like Julie, but it was cowardly and dishonest, like…
Like Susie.
Tears stung her eyes. She pulled off her mask, her back to the girl on the hook behind her. She ached with the effort to keep smiling. Her tears still fell.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
When she pulled her spraycan out of her pocket, she heard a gasp from behind her. Shame twisted her guts as the girl obviously realized that Susie was responsible for the slur. But when she started covering it up with more paint, burying it under the same shade of red, the girl’s surprise turned to vocalized confusion. Susie didn’t fully register what she said, she was too focused on her work now. Covering up the slur was the work of a thoughtless moment, but she didn’t want to leave it at that. She wanted to leave something pretty behind.
Ỳȏ̩͞u̖͘'̄͜r̀ē͝ ̀w̨̠̄̑ȧ̆s̛̞t̝̍̆́ï͒ng ͒t̞̿i̇́m̜̑̄e̶.̴̨̘̊
She grit her teeth, smiling through it as she wove her art onto the stone surface. Her paint grew past the boundaries of the now-buried slur, and it was a welcoming challenge to shape her new addition between the other girl’s messages. She couldn’t stand the thought of covering that fearless Yes, and? It was too perfect.
T̡̍he o̬̬̎t̝̅h̥ė̢͗r̕s̈ ̍ä̫͏r̦̎e̘͒ ̤͞w͏̴a͏͒i̡͞t̑i̶̊n̩g͏ ̿f̢o̶̥̠r̨͝ ̶͗̓ÿo̖͞u̵.̜̈́̆
Almost… done! Susie stood and stepped back to admire her handiwork. Her fresh tag, covering the slur she’d written and snuggled in between the two lipstick messages, was a bright red heart. It was pretty. It almost glowed in the lamplight. And, most importantly, it was fun. It was harmless fun! The kind that brought an honest smile to her face!
Th̆ȩ̥̟̓͝y ̀ẁ͝o̅n̵̤'̜t̞͜ ̑w̕a̫̎́i̜̖t̗ ̟͗́fo̴̗r̘͝ę̬v̅e͂̕͜r̤̊̍!̴̬
“I’m sorry,” Susie said again.
“What the…”
Susie stepped aside, giving the girl on the hook an unobstructed view of her art. She was careful to keep her back turned, hiding her unmasked face behind her hood. “I’m not…” She fumbled for words. “I didn’t mean…” What was she trying to say?
“Are you…”
I̙ ̧̎l̢͑ȩt̀ y̧̥o̵u͂ l̝i̡̩v̩̿̐ȩ̠̀ ̈in ̗m̬̬ẙ̨̧̐ ̜̙h̖̆o̞͗m͘͞ȩ̀ a̡̩̎n̊d̶̛ ̞̓t̩ḣ̟̠i̞̍s͞ ̜̕i̙͑s͂ ͂́͞h̜̎ơ͗w̧ ̿̀ỳ̪ou̴̝̿ r̜̟̊̎e̦p̖̍a̓͞y̑͞ ̠͜͞m͗e̟?̙͏
Before Susie could stop herself she’d turned to look over her shoulder. The other girl gasped, and Susie flinched away, hurrying to put her mask back on. Fuck, she was still crying, and her makeup was all smeared, and she was smiling like a lunatic—
“Are you, like, okay?”
“Yes,” she lied. “I’m fine. Just hurry up and die!”
Then she ran, the goth girl’s response (if she even made one) lost in the sound of Susie’s footsteps through the grass and the pump of adrenaline through her veins. She’d wasted too much time, the others in the trial had probably recovered from her little love-taps now. She’d have to hurry to make up lost time. The sooner she wrapped this up, the sooner she’d be with the rest of the Legion. Nothing else mattered to her. She wouldn’t let it.