“Has forgiveness happened to you?”
Stop, I don’t--I don’t understand the question, I don’t--
“Jus’ die, yerself.”
Don’t die, Mayrin, don’t, not now, don’t--
She doesn’t know what she looked like when she dragged herself out of the house and into the streets of Bree. A dazed, confused woman stumbling down the cobblestones, arms wrapped around her as though to defend from a chill, the hem of her bright white dress stained reddish-brown with blood--and the back of the bodice turned completely crimson, ripped straight in an even line to reveal the wound. Ripped. She doesn’t have the presence of mind to care about the word choice or even laugh to herself. She’s barely conscious at all.
It’s all a blur, now. Everything after the first bite of food slurs together in raised voices and bright colors and heavy eyelids and red and pain. She remembers watching the knife plunge into Mayrin’s stomach and she remembers trying to scream but it never came out quite right; she remembers arms pulling her up, one arm around her neck and one around her stomach and one plunging the knife into her, even though she knows that he only had two arms; and she remembers the pain of the blade, sinking through the muscle and the flesh, and ripping upwards through her back. She barely remembers sitting on the ground and seeing the color drain out of Mayrin’s face and into the fabric of her dress. She doesn’t remember how she came to be in Archet at all.
“Catilyn!”
She forgets the sound of her own name. Forgets that no one in Archet calls her “Cat” anymore. Forgets the voice that tries to call her back to life. It’s not the voice she wants to hear.
“Not-Red.”
She blinks her way into the world again, into a dimly lit room and hushed voices just out of reach, into a dull throbbing pain in her back that she knows will feel so much worse when the medicine they gave her wears off. She stares sideways into the room for a time, the voice still echoing in her head as she simply lays there on her stomach. It’s when the voice registers and she screams, trying to push herself up onto her elbows to find the speaker, that the small cluster of whisperers by the door rush to help her again.
Mayrin is not among them.
They confine her to bedrest again. She doesn’t argue. She can’t find the words. She’ll sneak out again when they aren’t looking. They never stay with her like they say they will, and she can see a walking stick--not her walking stick. This isn’t her house. She isn’t sure whose it is. But a walking stick is a walking stick, and if she can’t haul herself around on her own power, she can use it. This isn’t the first time she’s stared down death.
When she tries to drag herself out of bed the next morning, she collapses onto the floor into a heap of blood and screaming tears. The door slams open within a second and they’re on her like vultures, asking why she’d do that and talking about running down to get the bag again and having to redo the stitches and wouldn’t someone put her to sleep again. Someone holds her down and plays with her hair and someone else shoves the needle through her skin and pulls.
She escaped from them the last time, when her life spilled out of her stomach, before she was supposed to be out of bed. Now they linger over her like ghosts, constant presences always touching her arm or her forehead or whispering words to her, little shushing noises that made her skin crawl because it meant they didn’t understand. She still had things to do--could still catch him, kill him for what he’d done; and Mayrin, she could still save Mayrin, could still stitch her up and pull her back together, could bring her back to life with a needle and thread if they’d just--just let her go.
The days turn into a blur of sleeping and waking and always laying on her stomach. Faces she can’t see pass by, bodies sit on the bed beside of her and stroke her hair or touch her arm. She doesn’t cry. She can’t find that in her, either. She whispers back to them, in a voice already turning raw and cracked, names that she knows will mean something to her when she can feel again. “Anelore, Ralyn, Patunia, Mayrin.” Someone pats her hand--she hates that, hates when they touch her; every nerve in her body feels as if it’s on fire, feels like she’s going to burst out of her skin, and when they touch her, it only makes it worse--and promises that they’ll find them. Someone else comes back later and whispers that they can’t find Mayrin anywhere, but they’re still trying to reach the others.
They think she’s dying. She stops speaking. Those are not her last requests.
Recovery is slow, even when she stops sabotaging herself and lets them pat her hair and change her bandages and poke and prod. Sitting is all she can do for a while. Then it’s walking. Speaking, however, is another matter. They bait her with starts to conversations and try to make her talk, at least enough to tell how bad the pain is. She holds up fingers instead.
She speaks sometimes, when the voice comes and she tries to answer to keep it there. It never stays for long, and then she’s silent again.
They hold her there for longer than they did before. She doesn’t fight them anymore. Old playmates close ranks around her. Archet becomes a home again.
There is a difference, she discovers, between living and simply being alive.
