Maidens of the Fall

Scarlet Edge is going to rip out my throat.

Her aversion to touch was no simple distaste, it was for my safety. Now I’ve crossed an invisible line by reaching out and making contact with her shoulder. Violated an unspoken truce I didn’t even know we had. Her fist tightens on a handful of my t-shirt, filthy fabric creaking under the pressure of her knuckles. Her eyes turn hot, molten rubies washing out the dim electric glow. Tongues of ghostly flame flicker across stray tresses of her hair, an inferno about to ignite. She looms over me, thin lips peeling back from sharp white teeth, a crimson phantom blotting out the temporary dream of this bedroom refuge.

Scarlet is an untamed hound from a hell I can scarcely imagine. How could I be so foolish? The most powerful magical girl in all England is not some pathetic sop in need of a shoulder on which to cry. She contains her own limitless reservoir of corrosive fuel.

What is it like to be Scarlet Edge?

Closer she draws, our faces inches apart. We’ve been this close once before, when she impaled me on her sword. She burns with the same ferocity now, an unaccountable need for unspeakable acts. But this time I absorb her details: the subtle scent of her skin, wood-ash and hot-iron and fresh fire; her parted lips, her shuddering breath; her wide and staring eyes like boiling wine.

Been here before, haven’t I? Just not with Scarlet. This intensity has echoed in a million false dreams, alongside a simulacrum of Willow. Intimate together in secret shadows, possibilities and potentials spiralling outward from the moment of inaction, born in the shuddering uncertainty of shared liminal darkness. An in-between place where rules break down and anything can happen, where childhood friends can join their lips and express what they’ve always been, where a broken girl and a false angel can bring each other to weeping orgasm.

Except none of that ever really happened. Willow’s lying dreams have run together in my memory like diluted paint gone grey.

But this is real. Scarlet’s lips are inches from my own, peeling back to show a mouthful of canine teeth — an illusion in the dark — with which to bite clean through my windpipe.

Speak or die, Octavia. Take control or This Machine ends here.

“Heel,” I snap.

Francesca flinches as if struck. She blinks rapidly, extinguishes the fire in her eyes. Glances down at her hand bunched in my t-shirt, then lets go and recoils, hand flung high into the air, stained with flakes of my dried blood.

“I— I— I don’t— I didn’t—”

“Francesca—”

She lurches to her feet, hand held far out in front, framed by the frozen glow of the anime girls on the television. She lunges for the bathroom, almost trips on the corner of the other sofa, plunges into the darkness of her walk-in closet.

Bathroom light flickers on, banishes grey haze with warm glow. Water splashes. A soap bar clunks into a sink, dropped from frantic hands. Francesca hisses as if stung.

I’m not certain what just happened. Doesn’t feel quite real, here in the cave of the night.

Scarlet would have killed me, strangled me to death, or torn out my throat with her teeth, or perhaps even transformed right there and finished the job she started when we first met, stain her plush bedroom carpet with my intestines. Of that I am certain; if I had not spoken up, or if I’d failed to put enough steel in my voice, she would have continued her obsessive trajectory.

Bizarrely enough, I’m not afraid. Heart’s going a little fast, fluttering and catching. Thin cold sweat has broken out on my skin. Head feels hot and light. But I don’t want to run away, can’t even think of attempting translocation. A sensible young woman would try to minimise the fallout now, smooth over the ruffled feathers, plead a headache and go back to sleep.

Don’t want that; never claimed to be sensible. I want more — not of Scarlet’s aggression, but of whatever lies beneath.

Submission and surrender?

Raise my prosthetic hand again, examine the offending fingers. A moment’s touch unfolded Scarlet like a lethal blossom. What if I’d cupped her chin, would I have provoked an even more powerful reaction?

Will she kill me if I do that? Not if I keep my head.

Couldn’t dream of this with any other girl; couldn’t even reach out and touch Grimmy without pinning her to the bed and forcing my knee between her legs. But with Scarlet it’s different. She’s already tried to kill me; we’re past that now. She barked for me on command, and I made her cum. She saved my life when she should have ended me, took me home and hid me. I’ve slept in her bed. We watched her favourite — and illegal — anime together.

I’m supposed to try to get Scarlet Edge to flip sides; that’s what Signal’s plan called for. If I do that here, it would eclipse everything else. Everything will change. England wouldn’t believe it. Scarlet Edge gone rogue would be the greatest propaganda and material coup we could ever hope for.

My lips curl with brief disgust. That’s not why I want this.

Scarlet returns from the en-suite, moving stiff as old wire, hands and face scoured with soap and water, hair raked back. She leaves the bathroom light on, keeps the grey shadows at bay. Folds her arms, won’t look at me.

“We can pause the show there,” she says, nods at the television, then lets out a single bark of bitter laughter. “Not that I expect we’ll ever get a chance to continue. I suggest you watch the rest under your own power, if you really do care. You need more sleep. And so do I, it’s gotten late. Tomorrow you might be well enough to stand in the shower, I don’t know. And then perhaps we can get you out of—”

“Francesca.”

Scarlet stops. Stares at the telly.

“M’not leaving it there,” I croak. “Can’t do that.”

Scarlet tuts. “We can hardly watch the whole thing in one sitting. It’ll be far past sunrise by the time we finish. And I keep saying, I keep trying to tell you, you need more rest. You’re not actually immortal, no matter how you feel now. You can die just the same as any of us magical girls, you need to—”

“Not talking about the anime. Don’t play dumb.”

Scarlet takes a sharp breath. She can’t inflate her lungs all the way, arms folded too tight around her rib cage. “I’m … I only meant … I … ”

“What’s it like,” I echo, “being Scarlet Edge?”

A long frozen moment makes me doubt my strategy; Scarlet stands in utter stillness. I dare not even breathe. Have I pushed too hard, too fast, on the wrong track? Will she grow violent again, close off this narrow wound before I can clean it out? No, passivity would lead to my defeat here. I am like a zoog trapped with a hound; I must show that I have teeth of my own, I am an equal, not her prey.

Eventually Scarlet unfolds her arms, fills her lungs with a deep breath, straightens her back. She steps past the sofas and stands in front of the television, skinny torso bracketed by the electric glow and the bright cartoon. She casts one way then the other, breath coming harder and faster, a doubtful pugilist working herself up for a back alley brawl.

She locks eyes with me again, calm and steady, rimmed with red, hollow all the way down.

“I wouldn’t know,” Scarlet says, hard and bitter.

“No?”

“I thought I did. Once, I thought I knew exactly who I was and what I was about. I thought I had all the answers, all the purpose in the world.” She takes another deep breath, cannot quite conceal the shudder. “The day I was chosen, the night I was made into a magical girl, the morning after I was visited in a dream, can you guess what it felt like, for me?”

Shake my head. Stay quiet. Let her run.

“Joy,” she says. “Joy beyond anything I thought possible. When I realised what had happened, I woke up crying. Tears of absolute joy. You have no idea what it’s like, you simply can’t. Not you, not any of the other girls, at least nobody I’ve spoken to. Nobody felt like I did. Nobody got what I got out of that change. Before that night, I was … ” A hard swallow, choking down bad memory. Scarlet glances away, tightens her control. “I had a difficult childhood. And then, one day, in the space of a single night, everything changed. I was Scarlet Edge, and nobody, nothing, not a single thing could question that, not ever. Do you understand?”

“Maybe,” I murmur.

A ghost of a smile flickers across her lips, fragile as a long-dead leaf. “I knew it in my heart, or my soul, or whatever word you want to use. I knew my true name — Scarlet Edge — that very morning, before I’d even gotten out of bed! My first transformation happened later that same day. I went outside, I ran into the countryside, and I just— just— willed it to happen!” The smile grows, a genuine look I’ve not seen on her before. “I outpaced the professionals, the public relations people, even the other magical girls they sent to pick up the new-hatched chick. They expected the usual, a confused young girl. But oh no. They had to physically pull me out of the air to stop me flying around. They don’t tell that story for the public, do they?”

“They certainly don’t.”

Scarlet grows more animated. “And then I took to the media like a fish to water, as soon as the MGNRB and my patron and all the rest decided it was time. They made me into an idol. At thirteen years old, can you imagine how that felt? A dream come true, because it was! I loved my patron, my Dream-God patron, I thought she had given me the world. I loved the other magical girls, the public, the television cameras, the attention, the … ”

Her smile falters and fades as quickly as it bloomed. Scarlet’s face collapses back into hollow loss.

“All of it,” she says. “I loved all of it. Because back then I was naive enough to believe it was beautiful, and true.”

“Back then,” I echo. “What about now?”

Scarlet’s face hardens. Her eyes find me in focus. “Now? Now I think I never really knew anything. I don’t understand who I am, because I’m … I’m nothing. I’m nothing, again, the same way I was before. There’s nothing beneath the surface. Becoming a magical girl doesn’t change you, it simply reveals you. And I’m … nothing.” She clutches at her own sternum. “What have you done to me, Octavia?”

This runs deeper than I knew; I didn’t do this, I was just a catalyst.

“I haven’t done this to you, Scarlet. Not me.”

“But you have,” she says, a quiet quiver in her voice. “Until you, I was … holding myself together, holding to the lie. I had resigned myself to an utter lack of truth and beauty. Nothing was real because nothing could be real. So I could endure, if I told myself there was no alternative. But then … then you … ” Scarlet’s voice collapses into a breathy rush. “You’re everything I told myself did not exist, could not exist. You’re a paradox, a contradiction. You didn’t come in the form I expected.” She gestures helplessly at the television, at the magical girl cartoon, at Pastel and Neon. “So at first I didn’t recognise, I didn’t see what I was looking at, I didn’t understand. And how could I? How? How can you be so … so imperfect, such a … a … with missing limbs, and scars, and … and your face? When I stabbed you, your face, the way you looked at me, and you … you … ”

“We’re getting off topic,” I say. Reel her in. She’s fragmenting again, spiralling off into some fixation on me that I can only respond to in the same way I did via text, and neither of us are prepared for that. “What’s it like,” I echo again, “being Scarlet Edge?”

Francesca blinks several times, like snapping out of a trance. She takes a deep breath, stows her obsession.

She goes over to her desk and picks up one of the figurines of herself, then brings it back to the sofas and places it on the low table, facing me. Scarlet Edge in miniature, sculpted from high-quality plastic, her red-and-white dress flaring outward as she strikes a particularly elegant pose with her ruby sword. The blade is quite realistic. Her proportions less so; the sculpt has enhanced her curves.

“Ask her,” Francesca says. “That’s Scarlet Edge. A plastic toy.”

Can’t help a sigh. “Right. I think I get the point.”

A bark of laughter, low and bitter. “No. No, you don’t. You don’t understand. Nobody does, not even you.” She walks back to the desk and the vanity, surrounded by images of her transformed self pinned to the walls, a shrine to her image. She jabs one of the posters. “This is Scarlet Edge, she’s right here. And here. And here. And here. This is her. And this, too.” Promo shots and magazine illustrations and printouts of fanart; she tugs on them, as if threatening to rip them down, but never quite does. Her fingers curl as if they want to rip the paper off the wall, ball it up, hurl it around the room. But she merely taps, gestures, steps back again, casts her eyes across her own face reflected a hundred times. “All these, these are Scarlet Edge. I’m not a person, I’m a media franchise. A merchandising empire.”

“A propaganda figurehead,” I add.

Francesca whirls back to me, eyes wide with recognition. “Yes! Yes, you see? Maybe you do—”

“A propaganda figurehead,” I repeat. “For something you believe in.”

Scarlet goes still, stares at me like I’ve just slapped her, faint anger behind her eyes. Slowly she stalks back to the television, looks down at me. “Something I believe in?” she hisses. “You think I believe in … what?”

“England.” Can’t keep the scorn from my voice. “Justice.”

“Ha!” Scarlet barks in surprise. “Did you get that from Azure? It sounds just like her.”

“So, you don’t?”

“England,” Francesca echoes, packs that word with a hundred times the scorn I could. “England. Living a lie makes it easier to spot other lies. And, England? Can you imagine if they were exposed to the truth?”

“The truth of … ?”

“Me!” she hisses, jabs at her chest. “They had me on television for the first time when I was thirteen years old. Transformed and shining and perfect. I was perfect! And it felt so good, better than anything else in the world. I didn’t have to fake a smile. I didn’t have to pretend for the cameras. England loved me! The world loved me! Being Scarlet Edge, back then, it felt like being God! Unstoppable, unbreakable, beautiful! The best in the world and nobody dares deny it! Everything before then was washed away, forgotten, blotted out! The whole world looks at me and sees … ”

She trails off, takes a deep breath, swallows her esoteric anger.

“A lie,” I finish.

A shrug. “They saw what they wanted to see. They saw something which was theirs. And the more they made it theirs, the less it was mine. Whatever was real, it eroded away. And what now, if they saw beneath? What if they see the sheer contempt in which I hold them? What if they see … this?” She gestures at the television screen, at Majohiko, at the perfect cartoon world where magical girls fight back-to-back and fall into each other’s beds. “What if they see a reality which does not match their expectations?”

“They won’t like you very much. The image of Scarlet Edge dies.”

Francesca nods slowly. “Yes. Because Scarlet Edge is made up, and if she once belonged to me, she doesn’t anymore.”

I shift in my seat, try to sit up a little, despite the deep dull pain still tight in my core. Scarlet’s sob-story is real, I don’t doubt that; but if I don’t show my teeth we’ll never get further.

“This all sounds like a lot of justification for mass murder,” I say. “Your sword felt pretty real, when you stuck it through me. You do real things, out there. Kill real people. You’re not entirely a media invention.”

Francesca stares, eyes hardening. “Is that what you think this is? That’s what you think I’m doing?” Her voice lowers with quiet outrage. “You think this is me … justifying myself?”

“Subconsciously, maybe.”

Francesca laughs without humour, a slow, sad chuckle. “Why am I even telling you this? Why do I even care? I’ve nothing to prove to you, nothing! And yet you … you sit there, and you … you … fine!” she spits. “You want justifications? At least the killing is real.”

“Uh huh. That’s what I said.”

“No, you’re not listening,” she says. “But you do understand, you do. You, out of everybody, you understand, because I’ve seen you understand. Killing, fighting, face-to-face, that’s the only real thing in all this, the only real thing I have. The parts of it they don’t put on the telly, the things they turn off the cameras for, or they censor them out. I need no justification for that. Do you know why?”

“Because you’re … ” A psychopathic fascist butcher. But I hold my tongue; that won’t bend Scarlet in the right direction. “Because you’re good at it.”

“Yes!” Scarlet breaks into a lighting-flash smile, gone again the next instant. “Yes. Violence. It’s what magical girls are made for, it’s what we’re all for, it’s the one thing the mundanes all look away from. And I’m good at it! I’m really, really good at it. When the cameras are off and it’s me and all the parts they don’t want to show, it’s real. And I don’t have to justify myself to you, or anybody else, not for that. It’s what we’re for. It’s the only thing that makes sense! Nothing else is real, there’s no other beauty in the world. Everything else is just lies, and it all belongs to them. But the violence, that’s mine.”

“Them?”

Francesca casts an arm wide. “My Dream-God patron. The BBC, the newspapers, the internet, the whole fucking world! Them!” she spits. “England!”

A suggestion pushes to the tip of my tongue, an obvious offer, a way out: why not leave, Scarlet? Why not abandon all this and join us?. But she’s not ready yet. Francesca is creeping toward a cliff-edge, but pushing her now would meet only resistance. Hold my tongue. Let her run.

“But now … ” She simmers down, going cold. “Over enough time even the violence … even that has ceased to mean … to mean as much … ”

She turns to the television, choked by a sudden threat of tears, touches the screen with one hand. Trying to press through the barrier of glass, to join Pastel and Neon in their perfect world.

“All I wanted was just one real thing,” she says. “One beautiful thing. Just one … one tiny promise that it was real, that something was real.” She turns away from the telly, but won’t look at me, face twisted with bitterness. “Because none of it is. The Trio of Albion, Azure and Dawn, I was so happy when I met them for the first time. We were going to be the best of friends. Closer than sisters. But … but even them. Azure with her secrets and her fake fucking smile. Dawn and her closet psychopathy, her backroom plots, her smug face like she knows everything already. I tried, I tried so hard with them, but they weren’t real either. There’s no true friendship, no real companions. It’s all lies.” She takes a great shuddering breath, can’t keep her tears back anymore. “Because it’s not— like this— never like that. I can have— I can have a dozen fake lovers if I wanted, did you know that?”

“You mentioned it.”

“They’ll give me anything I want. A harem of my own. A dozen girls, any shape and size I ask for. They’ll all be perfect and— and fake, fake, fake, fake! Did you know the Trio is just interchangeable too? When one of us dies, they’ll shuffle in another. And I’m past my expiry date, but I’m still here, and I just keep getting stronger, and nothing— nothing happens, nothing changes! Would you even remember me, if I died here, if you— if you transformed and killed me and— and nobody would remember? Even my parents, my sister! It’s cost me everything, and what have I got in return? Nothing. My sister doesn’t remember me properly— I— I broke her— just wanted her to see me—” Francesca begins to cry, breathing too hard. “My parents— mundanes, they don’t even know, so confused about it, can’t keep it straight in their heads.” She rakes her own scalp with her nails, pulls at her hair, trying desperately not to sob. “It’s fake, fake, it’s always been fake, and I just wanted— just wanted— just—”

A helpless gesture at the television, at what she’s always wanted.

One gentle push? She’s not all the way to the bottom yet, but she’s falling fast. “Scarlet,” I croak. “Scarlet. Breathe.”

She closes her eyes, takes several deep breaths, tries not to choke or hiccup, not to shame herself.

“Scarlet,” I repeat. “Would you rather I called you Francesca?”

Tears flash-boil into rage. Scarlet’s eyes fly open.

“Francesca?! Francesca was a weakling!” She scrabbles with the cuffs of her long-sleeved t-shirt, and suddenly I know what’s coming. “Look! Look what she did to herself!”

Francesca bares her arms, shows me what I’ve seen once before but didn’t fully register, in that full-body selfie she sent me on the night we made contact. Now I know why Scarlet Edge’s outfit design has such long sleeves, cuffed right to her wrists.

Her inner forearms are covered in old scars, little parallel lines; across the road, not down the street. Worse on the left, because she’s right handed.

“You think I want to go back to that!?” she snarls. “You think I want to just give it up, go back to being nothing!?”

“I know what it feels like to be a corpse.”

Scarlet comes up short, shivering like a sapling in a storm. About to break one way — but then she goes the other. Straightens up, sucks down a single clean breath, raises her chin.

She tucks a corner of her lower lip between her teeth. Bites down hard, draws a bead of blood from pale flesh.

Francesca Fairfax transforms.

The bead of blood welling from her bottom lip expands like a flash-flood across her skin, swallows her mouth, her face, her hair. It engulfs her whole body, clothes drowned beneath a second skin of shimmering crimson. She is an eyeless pillar of living blood, narrow hips and slender chest and thin limbs clad in ripples of gore.

Flames erupt from the lake of blood — the deep red of her hair, licking forth in tongues of fire that settle about her shoulders. A pair of rubies kindle within her wine-dark grave; her eyes, blinking out from a mask of blood. Posture curls and coils her upright as her skin pulses through, shoulders back, chest out, chin high, regal and proud. Her dress blooms from the bed of claret, absorbing it and remaking it into smooth red fabric and chalk-white lace, flowing skirts of ivory about her hips, cream-soft satin climbing her throat and unfurling down her arms. High heels lift her another few inches. Her dress cracks open like bone cooked in fire, reveals bloody inner layers in crimson silk, the long elegance of her legs, the swell of her ruffle-framed breast.

She casts bloodstained light across the walls and floor of her bedroom, drowns out the electric glow from the television and the weak imitation from the bathroom. This space cannot contain her, too small and mean and mundane for such divine presence. A touch from her hair might ignite the walls, burn this house to ash.

Her ruby-red sword grows like a crystal, held in a scabbard of pale metal, belted at her waist with white leather.

Transformation completes. She stands tall, looks down with a sneer.

“I am still Scarlet Edge,” she says, in the crackle of a forest fire. “Whatever you are doing to me, it will avail you nothing.”

Through lingering pain and would-be mortal wounds and exhaustion that threatens more than another heart attack, transformation suggests itself to me. This Machine presses toward my surface, aching to match Scarlet’s energy. If only I could transform and stride up to her and look her in the eyes. If only I could make her see that she is not the lie.

But I can’t. Transformation would probably use up whatever dregs are keeping me alive and intact.

Instead, I let it show on my face. Maybe Scarlet sees that truth. Or perhaps she’s so fragile that she doesn’t need a final push. Maybe I’ve got nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s all her, all internal. Maybe I was never even a catalyst.

Scarlet’s face crumples into a mask of ugly tears. Her blood-light glow gutters, dies dim, goes out. She keens through clenched teeth, loses the final battle of her internal war. She starts to cry, wet and hard, full-body sobs that wrack her like a storm.

She rips her sword-belt off, tosses it to the floor with a frustrated cry.

“It doesn’t mean anything!” she wails. “It’s fake, it’s all fake, I know, I know, okay!? I know! But I can’t— I can’t do it anymore! I can’t— I can’t do this, I can’t— I can’t— can’t— can’t—”

Scarlet tears at her flawless white-and-red outfit. She rips the fabric across her chest and shoulders, ruining the lace, shredding the satin. She froths and rages, yanks at her sleeves until they burst and come apart, exposing her scarred forearms again. She tugs at ruffles, ripping her skirts, ruining her outline. She almost falls over as she kicks off her shoes, picks one up and hurls it across the room, where it thumps into the wall. She sobs harder and harder, broken and falling, until her outfit is ragged and trailing, laddered and torn.

Scarlet Edge is a butcher of my would-be sisters-in-arms. She has tried to kill me twice, and she would have killed Grimgrave if not for my intervention. I laughed in her face with delight when I punched her in the gut; I would see her ground into the dirt with my boot on the back of her head, grovelling and bloody and defeated.

But this isn’t that. This isn’t a foe defeated. This is a broken hound tearing at her own flesh.

My responsibility. Should I have held off, backed down, played the wrong part, kept all this under wraps for another six months, six years, the rest of Scarlet’s life? I could have gotten out of here with another day’s quiet, but that would have meant—

Abandoning her?

I want to ruin Scarlet, for those who have used her, those who would use her again. Ruin her as their tool. I want to corrupt her utterly. She’s ready.

On my feet, not easy. I lever myself upright with the arm of the sofa, grit my teeth to ignore the pain. Straighten my spine, though it burns inside my core. Raise my chin. Harden my voice.

No idea what I’m doing. Doesn’t matter anymore, because it has to be done, and I’m the only one to do it.

“Scarlet.”

Scarlet Edge stops tearing at herself. Slowly she looks up, tears running down pale cheeks, eyes wide with faint surprise. Like I’m the rising sun after an imperishable night. She straightens up, careless of her torn clothes, red-and-white rags hanging from her in ruined glory. Shallow scratches on her skin are already closing, magical girl physiology denying any further self-harm.

“This isn’t the only way to be,” I say.

She reaches toward me, frames my face from a distance.

“You,” she says through a veil of tears. “I still don’t understand you. Don’t understand how you survived … me. Scarlet Edge. Twice. You didn’t even try to run, you … you threw yourself at me. Fighting you … no, no, even just seeing you fight, or just … you! You! You’re the most real thing I’ve ever seen. It’s … beautiful. And you shouldn’t be. By all rights you should be … weak, and dependent, and … and dead. But you’re not. How?”

“Not very good at dying,” I croak. “Had too much practice.”

She half-sobs, half-laughs, shakes her head. “When we first met, when you were escaping Dream Control, the way you faced me down … at first I thought you were going to grovel, and you did, but that wasn’t you. And then you … you didn’t. The way you laughed, Octavia! Free. Completely free. You laughed at me, you laughed when you hit me, nobody has ever done that before. Nobody would dare! I couldn’t even conceive of it. I … I hated you for it, and then you were so beautiful.”

Scarlet’s words tug at the desire to transform again. This Machine is beautiful, she’s right.

“You took my sword,” she says, “all the way to the hilt. I had you, I owned you, I’d reduced you to nothing … and I was wrong. You bit back.” One hand rises, clutches at the bite mark on her lips, the one thing beside her scars that transformation cannot hide. “You bit me! You marked me. You marked me with your teeth and it’s … I-I never want it to go away. I want this imperfection for ever, and I … I can’t appear in public now, not with this, not anymore.”

“Yes you can.”

“Even now, how are you still alive? How can you be conscious and upright with those wounds? You fought a Dreamer, Octavia! A Dreamer, one on one! I don’t even … ” A helpless shrug. “When you did that, you confirmed everything, everything I thought about you, beyond my wildest dreams. Do you know why I drew art of you?”

Shake my head. Can guess, but I won’t.

“Because you were shining. You were defiant. You were … you. Everything I cannot be, cannot touch, cannot have. And then you … ” Her hand squeezes her own chin, cupping the imprint of my teeth on her lips. “You bit back. You bit me.”

“Scarlet.”

I take one step, away from the sofa, toward her. A shuffle is the best I can manage.

“And nobody’s forgotten you!” she says. “The news media, me, Azure, all the others. Nobody can forget you! How have you done that!?”

A shrug, all I can manage, pulling at loose innards. “No idea. Was hoping you could tell me.”

Scarlet tries to laugh, can’t get there through tears. “I … I wish … I could be like you?” Then gritted teeth, a welling of frustration. “No, no, that’s not what I want, I don’t want to be like you, I want … I don’t even know! I don’t know! Octavia, I don’t know! What have you done to me?!”

“Nothing.”

Scarlet backs up a step as I take another, though she doesn’t seem aware of it. Her face twists with bitter self-hatred.

“What does it feel like, for you?” she asks in a broken voice. “Being This Machine?”

I stop my advance. She needs to hear truth.

“It feels right.” Raise my prosthetic arm, damaged plates grinding against each other beneath the carbon fibre tape. “Like there was a me waiting to get out from inside, my whole life. Like this is how I’ve always been, but I didn’t know it before. I’ve been a corpse for ten years, Scarlet. I know what it feels like to be nothing. Now I get to live again.”

Scarlet bites back a wet sob. She stares at my prosthetic arm. “I thought … I assumed they were a weakness, when we first met. I was wrong.”

“They’re me. This Machine is anything but weak. My own anger blinded me a little, during the fight. But it also felt good. It felt good to just … be me.”

Scarlet nods, tries to choke back another sob. “It felt … felt like that for me too, at first. Back … back then.”

“What did I look like? In the armour, I mean.”

Scarlet can’t find words. She just nods, incoherent but so very eloquent.

“Scarlet.” I shuffle another step closer. Scarlet takes another step back, trailing the ragged shreds of her red-and-white dress, but there’s nowhere else to run. Her back bumps against the television.

“N-no—”

“Scarlet. Listen to me.”

“I … I … ”

Another step. Then another, around the little table. A third and I’m almost on her. Less than an arm’s length between us. She’s taller, doesn’t matter. Plant my feet, can’t fall over now, no matter the pain.

“Scarlet. You’ve been a bad dog.”

Her eyes go wide, glistening with tears. Instantly she stops sobbing.

“But,” I add, “it’s not your fault.”

She grits her teeth, tries to shake her head, can’t make words, just a high, faint, keening.

“You don’t need to die, and you don’t need to go back to being nothing,” I tell her. “You don’t need to give up on what you want. You don’t need to surrender to an image that you never asked for.” I almost laugh. “Can’t believe I’m telling you this, you. You tried to kill me twice. You tried to kill my new … ‘friends’. You tried to convince me to die, willingly. But I’m saying it anyway, because I think you know what you need. I think you know exactly what I’m going to say.”

Scarlet goes absolutely still. Stares at me in devastated awe.

I reach up. Both hands, prosthetic right and burned left. Cup her cheeks, frame her face, gentle but firm. I run my right thumb, my prosthetic thumb, over the bruise on her lips.

“All you need is a better hand holding your leash.”

Scarlet whimpers, but she doesn’t push me away. I’m so weak right now that she could shrug me off and knock me to the floor with her little finger.

“You don’t know who you are,” I carry on, “but I do. You’re Scarlet Edge. And Scarlet Edge is my good girl.”

“You don’t … ” she whimpers. “Don’t really mean that.”

“Don’t I?”

“You can’t— can’t offer me that, you can’t—”

“It’s not an offer.” I let her process that for a moment. “Good girl.”

“Nnnnnnn!” Scarlet keens. “You can’t! We can’t! I can’t just abandon— I can’t abandon England! You have no idea what we’re protecting England from, you don’t understand, you don’t— and it does need protecting, it does, it does, from you, from all of them. My— my sister needs protecting, it’s all—”

“Shhhhhh,” I hush her. Must keep control. If I waver now, I’ll lose her forever. “That’s not what this is about. S’about you and me. Mostly you. Everything else, leave it for the morning.”

Scarlet stares, framed by my hands, by burned flesh and damaged prosthetics. Her tears stop. An awestruck focus floats into her eyes.

“You have my permission,” I whisper. “Do it.”

Scarlet’s lips peel back, showing her teeth, the threat of a bite and the promise of more. She hesitates, the sound stuck deep in her throat, choking on a lifetime of expectations and restrictions and unfulfilled desire and an ocean of yearning.

“Bark for me,” I whisper.

“ … rrrr … rrruuurr!”

A shaky growl, a damp vibration in her throat. Hardly a bark worthy of this hell-hound. But it’ll do.

“Well done,” I say. “Good girl.”

Scarlet sobs once more, wet and choked and yet somehow complete. She pulls her face from my hands and surprises me, puts her arms around my shoulders, clinging on tight, clawing at my back, panting and heaving and struggling for breath, but no more sobbing. The pain makes me grunt, compressed wounds screaming in my core, but this is the price of victory. I put my hands on her sides, cold flesh through the rips in her dress. My prosthetic leg locks solid, the only thing keeping me upright.

Scarlet’s head goes over my right shoulder. She lets out a low growl. Teeth meet my flesh, through my bloody t-shirt.

She bites down, a touch too hard.

Scarlet Edge and This Machine stay locked together until time runs thin; if it were not for our bodies, we could stay like this all night. But pain and consciousness start to blend the wrong way, I begin to fade even as my insides are twisted with dull agony. Scarlet hears me grunt, or perhaps feels the tremor in my bones. Her teeth leave my shoulder, she leans away from me, ruby-red eyes stained with darker crimson, hazy and flushed.

“ … Octavia?”

Clear my throat with a rasp, speak through clenched teeth. “Gotta sit down, or I’m gonna fall down.”

Scarlet blinks several times, floats back to the surface of her self. “You’re … still injured. Yes, yes, you’re still deeply wounded, you … yes … right … okay.”

She half-drags me back to the sofa, half-stumbles in my wake. Lowers me down onto the towels, though I’m not sure we need those anymore. My joints and organs and bones and tendons creak as I slump into the sofa cushions.

Scarlet hovers for a moment, a wraith in loose bandages, side-lit by the electric glow of the television and the distant illumination of the bathroom light. Her own inner flame has guttered to a dark ember, as if the fires have been tainted by some esoteric chemical.

“May I sit with you?” she asks.

“S’your bedroom.”

Still transformed, she lowers herself to the sofa, awkwardly parallel to my side. Our thighs touch; she’s warm as a stone left in a campfire, sharp-edged and hard and awkward. Has no idea how to orient her body against another person. But then again, neither do I. Never done this before. I reach over with my prosthetic hand. She takes it in one of her own.

Eventually she grows still, head next to mine, legs touching.

Long minutes tick by, together in the darkness, staring at the anime on the television screen, still paused right where we left it. This Machine begins to shut down, crisis averted, state changed, uncertain horizon coming into view. But now is time for more rest, because tomorrow will be worse.

Scarlet murmurs. “What … what now? Octavia? What do we do … ”

“Shhhhhhh. Don’t think.”

“Don’t think?”

“Not yet,” I mutter. Can barely make words. “Not till morning. Good girls don’t think. Until the morning.”

~~~~~~~

Morning comes late and slow, a dripping accumulation of consciousness buoying me upward from the warm deeps of dreamless sleep. Cool air brushes the faint sweat on my face. Birdsong plays far away, blurred by the sound of wind through trees. A scent of leaves and grass and growing things trickles by, damp soil new-wetted by brief rain.

“Unnnh?”

Blink and squint against the daylight trying to peek around the edges of the curtains. Shift my hands beneath a thin cocoon, limbs heavy and slow; somebody has draped a blanket over me, tucked it around my ragged edges. I’m still sat on the sofa, facing the television, sunk deep in the groove pressed by the weight of my body.

Scarlet Edge — the plastic version, twelve inches high — stares back at me from the little table, bathed in filtered sunlight.

One of the windows at the far end of the room stands wide open, the curtain inched aside to let in fresh air and morning sun and the scent of wet grass. The television is off, as is the bathroom light. The bedroom is a comfortable cave of captured midnight shade, a shelter from the last day of a briefly-resurrected summer.

“Nnh? Scarlet?”

The real Scarlet Edge is sat at her computer desk, examining something on the monitor, sipping from a steaming mug. She’s untransformed, back to thin blonde hair and muddy grey eyes, skinny and scrawny, all fires suppressed. She wears the same jogging bottoms and long-sleeved red t-shirt as when she transformed, significantly more intact than her magical girl outfit.

She turns at the sound of my voice, meets my eyes, freezes. Slowly, she puts down her cup of tea.

“Octavia,” she says. “Good … good morning.”

“Time is it?” I croak.

“Almost midday. Quarter to twelve. Actually eleven forty eight, so closer to ten to twelve.”

“Mm.”

I push back the blanket and do something more foolish than baiting miss hell-hound last night — I try to sit up without testing first. A hard wince stops me cold, a sensation deep in my core like peeling the biggest scab in biological history. My insides are tender and raw, fragile as new flesh. My body has remembered it is not all steel and fire; it is also meat, and meat has nerves.

Slump back. Wheeze for breath. “Fuck. Ow. Ahhhhhhh.”

“Better? Worse?”

“Both!” I probe my front with my prosthetic hand. Sore and stiff, but not like touching an open wound. “Different. I think the holes might have closed up. Water. Scarlet? Water?”

Scarlet interprets my grunts correctly. She gets up and fetches a glass of water from the bathroom, hands it to me and watches me drink.

“Thanks.” I pluck at the blanket, still draped over my knees; lilac and purple, now with accents of dried blood. “Yours?”

Scarlet clears her throat, accepts the empty glass. “Bloodstains hardly matter now, I thought.”

“Mm. Yeah.”

I have another go at sitting up straight, slowly and carefully. This time I make it all the way, breaking into cold sweat and gasping at the sharper pain deep in my gut and belly, behind my rib cage. Scarlet takes an awkward half-step back, but stays silent as I hunch and pant, lets me get my breath. Pain is worse, but strength has improved; I test my legs against the floor, think about standing up. Cool morning air trickles beneath my t-shirt, laps the sweat from my skin.

“Octavia?”

“Mm.”

“What … I mean, I need to ask … I … ” Scarlet pauses, then lets out a sharp sigh. “Oh, I don’t even know what I’m being hesitant about. What now? What happens now?”

I deliver her a squint. “Breakfast?”

That earns me a beautifully exasperated huff. “That’s not what I meant! You know that’s not what I meant, you—”

“I know. Just wanted to wind you up.”

“This isn’t the time for that.” Scarlet gives me a very unimpressed look. “What happens now, Octavia? What are we, you and I? After last night, what are we now?”

Good question. I could — maybe should — say the sensible thing, the thing that Octavia Carter would have said for years when faced by such a question. ‘That’s up to you, isn’t it?’ Autonomy, independence, the weight of decisions and the status of a moral actor, this is my gift to you, Francesca Fairfax. Enjoy it. But that’s not what Scarlet wants or needs, even if she can’t say it in words.

Almost don’t think I can say it myself; but when I open my mouth it comes so naturally. Whatever strange alchemy we shared in the night, not all of it has vanished in the morning light.

“You’re my good girl,” I say.

Scarlet averts her eyes, an awkward twist on her lips. “It feels very different by daylight.”

“Still here though, aren’t I?”

Scarlet sighs, starts to fold her arms, then stops, leaves her cage open. “The question stands. What happens now?”

My turn to sigh. “Mmm. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Yes, I figured that.” Scarlet lets out what might be a laugh, shakes her head. “You and I, we’re still … we’re still enemies, Octavia. I don’t see how it can be any other way. England still needs protecting, that wasn’t some reflexive denial. I meant what I said, and now it’s the morning, so I’ve been thinking. And I’m not … I can’t betray … ”

“You gonna offer to take me in, protect me?” Can’t keep the scorn from my voice.

Scarlet does laugh at that one, a single bitter huff. “That sounds like something Azure would say.”

“She did make me that offer.”

Scarlet freezes, stares flint-hard. “Really.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Don’t take the offer. Azure is … well, her judgement is untrustworthy. She keeps a lot of secrets, that one. She wouldn’t be able to protect you, if you came from the cold.”

My turn to laugh, a dark little chuckle. “Scarlet, I’m not the one out in the cold.”

A pinched look. “Is that what all this was about? Trying to flip me to your side?”

“No.” Don’t even have to lie. “You know it’s not.”

Scarlet looks away, shamed. She murmurs, very softly, “Sorry.” A long pause, a deep intake of breath. “But it doesn’t change anything. One night doesn’t change everything, Octavia. I can’t just abandon England. Or my sister. Or … ”

Bright. There’s a wrinkle. Should I tell her? Not my place, is it?

Maybe if I tell her, she can stop Bright from murdering me.

“One night?” I echo instead. “Makes it sound like we fucked.”

Scarlet gives me another pinched look. “Perhaps we should.” But then she turns away and starts to pace. “What am I supposed to do now? I’ve never … I’ve never spoken to anybody about any of that before, and now you … you … what do I do now, hm? What do I do?”

“Come with me.”

“Stop being absurd!” Scarlet snaps. “I can’t! And that’s not what I want! Give me something—” She halts, sudden and sharp, staring at me. A swallow. “Give me something I can do.”

“You could stop killing your own kind.”

“My own … kind?”

“Magical girls. Or embryonic Dreamers just trying to escape. Any of those girls you’ve killed could have turned out like me.”

I brace for an argument, but Scarlet doesn’t erupt. She folds her arms and stares at a point on the floor, brow furrowed hard. “It all made so much sense in the night. Now it feels so … muddy.”

“Need me to fight you into submission?”

Up snaps Scarlet’s head, eyes burning with pinpricks of dark fire. Her lips part. A red tongue flickers out. Breath catches in her throat.

“Huh,” I grunt. “Well. Can’t do that right now. Not in any state for it.”

“I … y-yes, yes, that’s true.” Scarlet unfolds her arms and takes a deep breath. “Nothing material has changed. You’re still wounded and drained, you still need to be returned to your … ‘hideout’, as soon as you’re well. Do you need breakfast? Lunch? What am I saying?” she almost laughs. “Of course you do. Wait. Wait there. Try to stand if you can. But don’t go near the window. Stay out of sight. Octavia? Stay out of sight, understand?”

“I’m your little secret, Scarlet. Night time fun only.”

“Tch!”

Scarlet’s idea of a hefty brunch for a badly wounded semi-invalid is a pair of ham and cheese sandwiches with a wartime ration worth of mustard, accompanied by a big cup of tea. She grunts a bewildered negative when I ask about coffee again. This time I manage to balance the plate quite comfortably on my lap while I eat, since I don’t feel like getting off the sofa; my insides are still deathly raw. As I chew and swallow like a steady machine, Scarlet bustles about her bedroom, tidying up the bloody towels I’ve left everywhere, then feeding and watering the zoog.

He catches my eye through the mesh of his cage; I shoot him a wink. We’ll be out of here soon, little guy. Hold on.

Scarlet vanishes into her walk-in closet for a few minutes, then emerges again with an armful of clothes. She lays them out on the bed one by one, glancing at me between each item. Plain socks, functional white knickers, a big baggy black t-shirt, a shapeless matching hoodie, a pair of cream-and-red jogging bottoms.

“What are those for?” I ask around a mouthful of bland sandwich.

Scarlet frowns, like I’m being a bit slow. “You, of course!”

“Oh. Why?”

“Because I am thinking of other ways to get you out of here! If we have to leave via mundane transportation, I can’t be dragging around some bloodstained woman. You need to look clean. This is the best I can do, I think. The underwear is new. And you wouldn’t fit one of my bras, so … sorry. About that. I mean.”

“Hate to break it to you. But I don’t think I should go near public transport.”

“Oh for— I don’t mean that. I mean driving. Or if I have to fly you, or something. I haven’t finished making a plan yet. It’s just … in case.”

“You can drive?”

“Of course I can drive! You can’t? I thought you were, what, twenty?” I rap my prosthetic knuckles on my prosthetic knee. Scarlet’s eyes go wide. “O-oh. I didn’t mean … I meant … you … ”

Can’t keep a smirk off my face. Scarlet throws her hands up. Could drive if I cared to learn.

With the last bite of my sandwich travelling to my stomach, I sit forward again, tensed against the pain. I raise my prosthetic arm, rotate my wrist, work the fingers of my hand. Broken plates of CFRN grind beneath the carbon fibre tape. Sounds loose.

“If I’m gonna be down here much longer,” I say, “then I need something to hold this together. Got any duct tape?”

Scarlet wrinkles her nose. “Duct tape? On your own arm?”

“Better than having it fall apart.”

“Yes, but … ” Scarlet pauses, then straightens up and bobs her head, as if bowing to me. “I would like to formally apologise for damaging your prosthetic arm.”

“Wasn’t your fault.”

“But, still. I’m glad you repaired it. It looks … much more … um … ”

“Like shit.” I snort. “It looks like shit, Scarlet. You can be honest.”

Scarlet throws up her hands again. “I am trying to be polite!”

“Doesn’t suit you. And hey, you’ll apologise for the arm, but not for trying to gut me?”

Scarlet bristles, as if rubbed the wrong way. “That was entirely different!” she hisses. “I thought you understood, after last night. I thought I’d made that clear, I … ” She trails off at the look on my face, a look I hadn’t know I was capable of making. “You’re winding me up again. Aren’t you?”

“Mmhmm. Can’t help myself. Hey, at least you’re learning.”

Scarlet glowers, makes me want to pinch her cheeks. I ignore her and shuffle toward the edge of the sofa, preparing to stand up, testing my legs. Prosthetic feels as strong as ever, new foot still in good condition, and my left isn’t too bad either. Up I go, one hand on the arm of the sofa. My insides grind like broken glass, the engine of This Machine fluttering and catching, but chugging onward with slow, steady beats. Deep breath makes me wince, inflates my ribs around the slow-healing wounds from Willow’s last stand. But I’m up.

“Alright,” I mutter. “I can stand. That’s a start. If I’m gonna put those clothes on, I … ”

Scarlet is staring at me in a new way, distant discomfort in her eyes, turned inward.

“Yes?” I prompt, since she’ll take all day to get there on her own.

“Your ‘hideout’,” she says. “You and your companions. What’s your … are you planning … is it at all like … ” Her eyes flicker to the dark screen of the television.

“We’re not like your anime show, no,” I say. “But I’d wager we’re closer to it than you are.”

Scarlet eyes me. “You would accept anybody? Any magical girl?”

A shrug pulls at my insides, provokes a wince. “Not up to me. Not like I’m the leader.”

Scarlet huffs one of her short, bitter laughs. “Ah yes, of course. There’s your Dream-God to consider. The pretender in charge.”

“Nerys?” I almost scoff. “Please, she’s not in charge either. Nobody is.”

Scarlet frowns. “How would that even work? You take votes? Sit in a circle and discuss everything?”

“Not quite. Not been at it long, myself.”

Scarlet shrugs, trying to throw off a mantle she can’t quite shift. “And you … you and … what’s your relationship with the clown girl?”

“Grimgrave. Grimmy. That’s her name.”

“Yes, alright,” Scarlet sighs. “What’s your relationship with ‘Grimgrave’?”

Study Scarlet with great care, the way her eyes flick to mine and then away again, the way she compresses her lips, turns her head aside. What is she really asking? How much can I risk here? How much does she need to be brought to heel?

“Scarlet, I need you to be a good girl.”

She blinks at me, blushing, caught doing something she shouldn’t. “I-I don’t—”

“Grimgrave is mine too. Hurt her and I will be very displeased with you. Understand?”

Scarlet goes wide-eyed with shock. Then she tuts and turns her face away. Folds her arms tighter. “I’m still your enemy, Octavia,” she mutters. “You can’t expect to give me orders. You can’t … ”

That’ll have to do for now. I offer a silent prayer to Nerys, and any other Dream-Gods listening, that Scarlet’s propensity for jealousy is less than that of her sister. If she goes after Grimgrave again …

I’d save Grimmy first, no question.

Right?

A deep breath to clear my mind, pain crackling down my insides. I raise my arm again, examine the carbon fibre tape. “How about that duct tape, then?”

“Yes, yes,” Scarlet says with a huff. “There’s probably some, somewhere in the house. I can go look.”

“If I’m gonna put those clothes on, and wrap my arm up, I need to shower before, not after.” I glance at the walk-in closet and the bathroom beyond. Take a step, wobble and reset. Still very unsteady on my feet. Pain fizzles and sparks up my ribs and my spine, the remains of holes in my back. “Fuck. I don’t … don’t even know if the wounds are closed yet. Gotta … gotta check … ”

Another step. Another wobble. My hand steadies me, on the back of the sofa. It’s a long way to that bathroom. Long way down.

Humiliation rises up my throat like a bolus of stomach acid.

Even if I make it twenty paces or so to Scarlet’s no-doubt swanky en-suite bathroom without falling flat on my face, how am I ever going to climb over the edge of a tub to take a shower, let alone wash myself? The thought of trying to bend down or twist around makes me break out in a fresh wave of cold sweat; even the smallest such motions will aggravate the ragged tissues and pulped organs inside me, no matter how indefatigable magical girl healing will be in the end. Right now, This Machine is still broken, no matter what victory I’ve had here.

I’m an invalid again. A useless cripple who can’t even keep herself clean. I probably reek of rotten blood and stale sweat by now. It’s a wonder Scarlet didn’t recoil from me last night.

“Scarlet,” I croak. “What kind of shower do you have in there? If it’s walk-in then maybe … ”

Scarlet has gone very still. She had been moving toward the door, but now she’s frozen, examining me with an intense look, little points of fire dancing inside the grey of her eyes.

“Walk-in,” she murmurs. “But there’s no way you could … ”

“Scarlet?”

Scarlet Edge takes a deep breath, straightens up, raises her chin. She blinks and her eyes clear like coals under fresh air, a solid glow as she looks down at me. She braces her feet, chest thrust forward, a blaze behind her face. Sudden confidence radiates like heat-haze, the same absolute self-certainty she possessed when we first met, when she ran me through with her sword.

“Octavia Carter,” she says. “This Machine. You cannot shower on your own, you would fall down and injure yourself. So. Let me do it for you.”