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“No, it’s okay,” Liz says, with a smile that says it isn’t. “It’s okay. You’ve missed a lot. We’re together again.”
Isobel looks at them, not just the obvious hand-holding but the way their thighs press together on the couch, the way their center of gravity seems to be somewhere in the slouching middle. At her side, Rosa crosses her arms and rubs them a little. As Isobel pulls down a blanket from the back of the couch and over her shoulders, she can’t help thinking: Is that what we are? Together?
--
It’s a bad day. They all are, threat in every direction like the silent white walls are funhouse mirrors, amplifiers, echo chambers. One enemy hand always turns into two, one bruise into four. Isobel’s gotten used to bad.
Today is worse.
At least she thinks it’s one day, and that’s the whole point — Rosa isn’t back yet. It’s how she usually keeps track, when she’s stuck in her cell. No labs or guard chatter or regular meals to mark the time. They take Rosa when they don’t take her, and then at the end of the day, they bring her back.
But it’s been too long.
The cracked wall pinches at the tender tips of her fingers, nails ragged to the quick from how long she’s been dragging them against it. She can’t shake the feeling that if she stops, Rosa will never come back, and what’s a little pain compared to that, it’s nothing, nothing, so she keeps going, until the walls pulse pink, and she shuts her eyes against the glow.
They fly open again at the hatch in her door unlocking. Something pops unpleasantly when her feet collide with the floor, scrambling forward, grabbing for the hand that’s dropping off a square of the chemical poison they feed her, snatching it back before the guard can retreat.
A masculine voice curses, trying to jerk out of her grip. The bones shift with bitter taste between her jaws, and the cursing takes on a higher pitch, a yelp for her to stop.
Isobel lets go, and spits sweat from her mouth. “Where is she?” she asks.
“Like I’m gonna tell you,” he says, scoffs, and tries to get his hand back again.
Isobel remembers hearing once that a human finger is about as hard to bite through as a baby carrot. Remembers the taunting pitch of the little girl’s voice, saying no one could do it because your brain just doesn’t want you to bite through a finger — apparently human fallibility of the worst kind.
But Isobel isn’t human.
The guard’s blood is hot on her lips, slippery like melted butter. She spits again, not tasting victory until he stops howling, panting into his radio for help.
“Where is she,” she repeats, and sets her teeth another knuckle up.
The hand flails. “God, stop, stop, she’s in the lab, like normal, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth.”
“She’s in the lab!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Hey,” barks a different voice from outside, strained but familiar, and Isobel lets go out of pure relief. “What are you doing? Get away from there!”
The door drags open like cartilage off the bone. Rosa glares at the guards even as they shove her inside, fielding a last kick through the door before it slams shut on them both. The hatch rattles as the guard on the ground is pulled invisibly away, a single bloody streak left behind.
“Rosa,” Isobel breathes, barely taking in the dark, red circles around her eyes before Rosa’s crouching down and reaching out for a hug.
“Are you okay? What’s going on? You’ve got blood,” Rosa asks, quickfire, already nocking another breath as she searches Isobel’s face for injury.
“I think I just bit someone’s finger off,” Isobel says. “You were gone for so long, I just needed to know you were okay.”
“No, I —” Slowing, Rosa pulls back further to look at her seriously. “Are you losing time?”
Anger flashes through Isobel, burning her cheeks and throbbing painfully in her fingertips. Her jaw twitches with the urge to snarl and gnash at the implication that she’s losing it, that it’s not fair, that not every single second since she arrived here has been time lost to her.
But it has been lost. To both of them.
The fire, repentant, banks itself.
“I think I’m going crazy in here.” She lets it out on a whisper.
Rosa laughs a little, short and hard, as she sits gingerly on the floor at her side. “Crazier if you weren’t,” she says, then, “Hey. I’m okay. See?”
Her smile, when Isobel looks up enough to catch it, is ironic and sad, but steady: encouraging her to keep looking. Her eyes are sunken but, on closer inspection, not much worse than they have been the past few days. The IV tracks are bruised but closed. The only new thing is a series of small incisions on her hands and wrists, which Isobel closes gently between her hands and wishes for a next-to-countless time that — for — different. She wishes for different.
“Thanks,” she says.
“I’m not going anywhere. So you better not either. Okay? Promise me that?”
Isobel laughs, though it comes out all wrong. “Dumb thing to promise.”
“Don’t give a shit. Promise.”
It feels like reversing a decision she’d already made. Unnerved, Isobel hangs on tighter, then lets go, because — “Shit, your hands, sorry.”
“Fuck you, Isobel,” Rosa says, startling her into eye contact and holding her there fiercely. “Promise me we’re in this together.”
“We’re in this together,” she says automatically. A tension in her breast unlocks, sending her into a shaky, deep breath of relief. She shakes her head. “Sorry. I promise. We’re in this together.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Rosa stares at her for a moment longer. “Good.” Her thumb brushes over Isobel’s mouth, a tacky reminder over the regular rough chap. “I think it’s too dry already,” she says, but starts working at the smear of blood with the edge of her shirt anyway, a rough, welcome scrape.
This close, Isobel can see the darkening swell of her mouth on one side, a split that lines up with the edge of a tooth.
She thinks, I’m a horrible person.
She thinks, I’m glad you’re here with me.