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In the middle of the night, Dawn breaks.
This is something best experienced through a clouded windshield, fogged with a dew point well before forty, when the sky varnishes itself with a powder blue—white, almost—like the sky itself is blanketing a frozen lake. This is best experienced when time captures you, when the clock crawls past midnight, past three, past four, even; when you haven't dared to look at the clock. This is best experienced when you're driving too slow, for too long, on a lonely highway, playing games like coming home, when you roll the dice to decide where home is.
Eve rolls the dice like she shoots guns. Messily. Quickly.
She takes a left turn and the dice roll spells out: Cabin.
Spells out: Loved-up hikers.
Spells out: Slaughtered.
Not yet. Maybe never. If they're home, they will be. If they're not home, they're lucky.
The cranked-down window sucks ashen trails from the tip of Eve's cigarette. She forgot she was smoking it. The ash sits pretty, the ash sits fragile, too long, waiting to collapse. Like things tend to do when it is the middle of the night, and Dawn breaks, and sleep is treated like a chore you forgot to do. Laundry left in the wash.
This is something best experienced when the body gives up frenzy.
Villanelle died one month ago.
Eve survived one month ago.
Spot the difference between these two sentences. There isn't one.
Villanelle floated down. Eve kicked, and swam, and choked on river-water, and threw up an empty stomach onto sleet rock, and hated herself for it. Hated herself in new ways. Eve, who has experienced survival like something knit deep into the depths of her marrow, who would tear herself apart just to do it all over again. The right way, this time. The dying way, this time.
But Eve survived. And if Eve entertained notions of therapy, or help, or memory, she may have remembered that she learned about the stages of grief once. Something like this:
I. Denial
Eve pulled herself out of the water. Eve threw up an empty stomach onto sleet. Eve dove back into the water. Kicked, and spit, and dove, and surfaced, and dove again. Eve treaded water in a way that was inhumane. Searching for a body. Anything. A body. A body. A body. Her body. Eve searched for a body until her own body gave up. She floated on her back when Dawn broke. She was going to drown herself. It's hard to do. She would do it. Flood herself. She could do it.
She couldn't do it.
College boys on a Jet Ski fished her out. Saw a speck of mustard yellow, noticed it was bobbing, noticed the arms flailing; fished her out.
On the choppy ride back to the shore, with hushed voices floating around her head, and hands prodding at the hole one inch below collarbone, Eve realized she survived.
She didn't.
Who decides?
Whoever's finger is on the trigger.
II. Anger
Eve broke out of the hospital. Eve broke into frenzy. Eve found Carolyn. Eve killed Carolyn.
Bare hands.
That's all.
III. Bargaining
Eve haunted the streets. Slept on the streets. Sat atop a stone by the river, thought in whispers:
If you come back, I won't waste it.
Sat atop a stone by the river, yellow turtleneck nothing more than a wrecked piece of fabric, clinging to her body like a guilty survivor, sat atop a stone by the river, shrieked in open mouth:
Come back, you fucking coward!
Collapsed atop a stone by the river, hair knotted, eyes heavy, whispered in stutters:
It wasn't supposed to be you.
Eve didn't know which way she meant it.
It was never supposed to be you in the first place.
Eve sat atop a stone by the river, thought about beginnings in bathrooms, and endings in water.
It was never supposed to be you in this last place.
Eve sat atop a stone by the river.
IIII. Depression
This is where Eve is now. If Eve remembered the cycles of grief, she could touch hope like a hot stone. If only for a moment. If only to pull her hand back in agony. But Eve doesn't remember.
She places a Revel in her mouth with shaky fingers. Sucks on coffee, and chocolate, and disgust that she can't taste. If she blinks too quickly, she sees Villanelle in her passenger seat. If she's lucky, Villanelle is still there when she whips her head around to look. Tonight, she is not lucky.
She's almost to the cabin. She snubs the cigarette out when the air begins to nip a little too greedily at her cheeks. Cranks the window back up. As the sky splits in two, white and eerie, she tries to imagine Villanelle as an angel, kicking up. Tries to imagine Villanelle as an angel at all.
Eve can't do it. She wonders if this says more about her than it does about Villanelle.
III. Depression
Loved-up hikers are loved-up elsewhere.
They rolled the dice and got lucky.
She doesn't believe in fate anymore.
Eve breaks in through the window above the sink. And if she sees a vision, with fingers flexed around ceramic, donning a creme knit-sweater, it's gone before she can register it. Eve's knees fall too hard on the tile counters. She breaks three glasses. She lowers herself onto the floor.
She blinks.
The cabin looks exactly the same as it was the last time she was here. Wood charred in the fireplace. Death card face up on the wooden table. Eve wonders how much time has passed, and if she cared, or if she thought knowing would make misery something livable, she would check. But she does not check. And she does not fight her body as it pushes her in the direction of a small hallway, pushes herself into the first door on the right, where a sleeping bag lays open and crumpled from body.
Bodies.
Eve stares it. Wonders how long things can hold their shape after the shape is gone. When she approaches the bed, she lowers herself onto her side. Back turned to where Villanelle once laid. Back always turned to where Villanelle lays. This is what surviving reduces you to. A turned back.
And when she turns over, and catches the generic scent of purple shampoo lingering on the pillow, she curls into it. Fists her hands in the pillowcase. Lays face-down on her belly.
Shivers.
Screams.
Lets the fabric swallow all of it.
Because when Eve settles, lets her body go a little too still, lets her spine go a little too slack, she feels it. A palm splayed over her shoulderblade. Tracing. Too gentle. Feather-like. Fake.
Eve doesn't get up for two days.
No. Not even to piss.
III. Depression
Eve haunts the cabin for a month. The loved-up hikers never show. She imagines them somewhere warm. On a beach. In love and naive and bonded over organs and not much else. The snow falls outside in shimmers and taunts. Blankets the ground in white; frosts the window until she can barely see out of it. If she could see, she would imagine spying on loved-up hikers pissing behind different bushes. But she can't see. So she can't imagine. Future or otherwise.
She's made a mess of things. Found bread in the freezer. Found peanut butter in the shelves. Canned anchovies in the cabinet. Instant coffee on the counter. Her daily routine is no routine at all. White bread, unwarmed, with Skippy spread on both sides. Coffee made with warm tap water. Unboiled. Anchovies for lunch. And in the evening, she gets restless. Steals puffer jackets from the closet, treks out in the snow in the wrong shoes, collects branches, lets moisture dampen her socks, makes too much noise when she hears animals nearby.
She wants to lure something into the area.
She wants to be violent.
She wonders if she still can be.
If she's capable of skinning, or gutting, or fighting.
She isn't.
She always comes back to the cabin in one piece.
She survived.
In the fireplace, there's a mess of wood. Old wood, charred, and feeble. New wood thrown on top, almost too wet to catch. She spends hours getting it to catch. It gives her something to do.
When the fire finally does catch, and she's squatting near it with warm shins, she hears Villanelle's breath beside her:
I think I might kill them.
She hears the ghost of her own voice:
I think I might help you.
This is what surviving does. It breaks promises. It strips you. So many things left undone.
And if Eve was violent, she would hope that the loved-up hikers would walk through the door any minute. So she could undo what is supposed to be left undone. But Eve is not violent.
Because Eve survived.
III. Depression
A month and a week in the cabin. Eve doesn't know this. She talks to Villanelle out loud, while she butters her bread, and watches mold collect on the dishes in the sink:
"I think you could have done it, by the way. The interior designer thing. You're annoying and unrelenting. Designers tend to be like that."
Eve laughs in ways that are quiet and too-short. The sound escapes from her mouth, and it startles her, and she shuts her lips quickly in hopes to catch it.
More frost collects on the window.
She wonders if she'll be snowed in soon.
When she picks anchovies out of the jar, and lowers them into her mouth, and chews on salt and umami, she talks to Villanelle:
"I still think it's weird that you don't like mustard."
Eve swallows.
"Didn't."
Eve blinks. Stares.
"Whatever."
And later, when the cabin plays at tranquility, with a quiet that could inspire a pin to drop, and the wood is catching with sparks and cracks, she stares at it. Whispers to Villanelle,
"I think you could have done it. By the way."
The wood splits.
"Survived, I mean."
An ember catches on the carpet. Eve watches it. She wonders if it'll catch.
It doesn't.
Eve watches as the spark dies.
This is what surviving does to you.
III. Depression
One month and two weeks in the cabin.
Eve doesn't know this. Grief means calendar pages go unflipped. Grief means no calendar at all.
Eve has spent her time thinking about all the ways she could hang herself from the ceiling. She thinks about all the things she'll never do. She hates herself for it. Survival knit into marrow since birth. Survival knit into her marrow like penance. She hates herself for it.
When the cabin is too still, and too dark, she imagines Villanelle underwater. How she couldn't even see her, not really, not amidst the murk and the blood and the chaos. Eve wonders if this is what upsets her the most. The not-seeing. This was always something that was supposed to be meant just for them. If one was to go out, the other could savor it. But things are taken, and things are stolen, and you are left stripped.
She stops thinking about it.
While a fire burns in the other room with scent, fuming smells of wet Earth and must, Eve is wrapped up in a sleeping bag, trying to remember the last time she slept, when she hears the door open.
That particular type of creak of wood that is quiet and aching.
She stills.
Loved-up hikers rolled the dice wrong. She didn't expect this.
She wonders if she can kill them. Got too comfortable with peanut butter and anchovies.
She wonders if she can't kill them, whether they can kill her.
She gets out of bed.
When Eve rounds the corner, bare-foot and unbalanced, she lifts her hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight streaming in the door. In the middle of the night, Dawn breaks.
The snow reflects the sunlight in white streamlets; challenges her eyes to adjust to the static of it, and they do — adjust — only to focus on the figure standing in the doorway.
Snow is caught up in her hair. Glistening little flecks threatening to melt into bleach. Tattered jumpsuit. Different color. This one is a jarring black against the white. She stands with a bag slung over her shoulder, eyes glazed, wide, scar above her eyebrow, lips open and trembling. All angel, no glory. White light, blinding, and not in the romantic way.
Villanelle takes a step forward. Eve takes a step back. Knocks her hip into the table.
"Eve," Villanelle whispers. No hint of a smile. She moves to sling the bag from her shoulder to the floor. Her movements are languid; quiet. Voice stunned, seeping into a broken whisper, "Eve."
"No," Eve whispers. Stays very still.
This is what happens when you survive. You stay very still.
Eve watches as Villanelle's mouth doesn't move, but tears collect across the expanse of her cheeks. Villanelle stands, doe-eyed and frozen, fingers twitching, palm reaching out.
"No." Whispers rattle Eve's chest, "No. No."
She watches as Villanelle's eyebrows knit. Eve focuses on the new scar that splits the end of her eyebrow. On the way the light clings to her figure, painting her ghostly when its supposed to paint her angelic. Eve watches as Villanelle's palm drops, as her eyes don't blink, as she stutters.
This is what surviving does. It is nothing to be poeticized. It is nothing that spurs you to collect flowers, to deposit them in the soil, it is nothing that makes you pray, or believe, or fear God. It's this. This is what surviving does. It makes you fucking insane.
Because the white piece of scar tissue splitting Villanelle's eyebrow is a taunt from Eve's imagination. Because the way her hair is too blonde, too white, and eyes too shiny, is a joke without a punchline. Because the way Villanelle whispers, and doesn't smile, and speaks only in broken sentiment and stutters, is treachery with tricks. This is not her Villanelle.
Eve and Villanelles stare at each other for two seconds too long. Eve, calculating all of the inaccuracies that her imagination has left her with, calculating all the ways that memory is something to betray you, that memory never stays around for long. Villanelle, wide-eyed and wielding stun like she is the one who survived, like she is not dead, like the longer she looks at Eve's face the longer she is taking to put the puzzle pieces together.
Insanity is a one-way mirror. It does not matter if one is dead and one is living.
"It finally happened," Eve whispers. Forces a quiet laugh from her throat. If she were bold, she would step forward — trace Villanelle's cheek with survived fingers. But she is not bold. Because she survived; surviving weakens soldiers who were once strong. "I'm actually fucking insane."
"No." Villanelle says too abruptly, shakes her head. Takes a step forward with outstretched hands. Eve steps back. Villanelle wears her heart like a glint in her eye and Eve watches it split in two. Villanelle sets her jaw. "Eve, you are not insane. I'm here. I'm alive. I survived."
And Eve laughs in the same motion that she feels bile crawl up her throat. Her stomach churns with the weight of something that is more corn syrup than peanut butter, and she barely makes it five steps to the sink before she's throwing up on moldy dishes. She heaves. Once, twice, three times. Her breath comes out shaky and dry on the fourth, and her fingers grip the corners of the sink. Her body threatens her again when she feels the touch of a splayed palm against her spine.
Eve whips around with unbalanced force and swings. When her fist connects, her stomach shatters. Villanelle recoils, brings a hand to her jaw; stares at Eve with raised eyebrows.
Eve stares at her fist. It shakes. The way something does when it feels like it's connected with skin. Feels like. Eve meets Villanelle's eyes over clenched fingers. She lowers her hand.
"No."
And Villanelle rubs at her jaw, lips curled in that tight faux-smile, and this Villanelle is a taunt to an open wound, so close to the real thing, but just different enough, for Eve to not know peace.
"Yes, Eve."
"I watched you drown. I surfaced. You never did. I searched for your body. For hours. I stayed for days. You never showed. You're somewhere at the bottom of the Thames. You're not here."
And Eve swallows the lump in her throat, to say it out loud, to shatter delusion,
"You're dead. You've been dead."
Villanelle — this Villanelle — wears something like surrender in her eyes. She lifts her arms up to her sides, looks herself down as if she's proving something, to herself, to Eve. She lets her eyes rake up Eve's body and Eve watches surrender turn to desperation, to something fearful, to something that outlies all of these things.
Villanelle's throat goes thick, Eve watches, Villanelle's lip trembles, Eve watches, Villanelle's smile is no smile at all, just solemnity worn different, Eve watches.
"Eve," Villanelle whispers. Shivered words. "Please let me touch you. Let me show you."
And Eve presses her low-back further into the counter. Her chest burns. "No."
Because if Eve's sanity is a lost cause, she will make peace with it, but she will not let muddled delusions touch her in the way Villanelle once did, she will not kiss her imagination with a force that is only meant to be rooted in reality, Eve will live, Eve will go insane, Eve will die, but she will leave her skin as something touched by Villanelle and only Villanelle and not This.
This is what surviving does to you. It makes you loyal to corpses.
In the low-light of the cabin, Eve watches as Villanelle's skin blossoms red on her jaw, where her fist made contact. Villanelle watches Eve's eyes as Eve struggles to accept the type of insanity that you can touch. Like handling a hot stone, Eve is desperate to reach the next stage.
"I've seen you before. Glimpses." Eve whispers, lips barely moving, "Not like this. Not... touching."
And Eve watches as Villanelle runs her tongue over her teeth. Stares at her in that way where she can't stare for too long, just long enough, before her eyes trail the wallpaper, before she bites her lower lip with intent to feel, before her eyes focus back on Eve in dewy focus.
And this is not her Villanelle. But boy, she's trying hard to be.
"Pam pulled me out."
Eve steadies her breath. Waits two beats. "What?"
"The river. Pam pulled me out of the river."
And Villanelle's voice is quiet and stern. Whispering fables with intent to make them real. And Eve doesn't know what's worse that this — this version of Villanelle — pleads with a petulance that is a little too real, or that Eve thought this would be enough. A ghost. Being haunted. Worse.
Eve crackles into laughter. Laughter crackles into tears. Lips cracked in grin, snot running down her cupid's bow, wiping at the cracks in her face with the back of her hand. She laughs through the wetness. She can't stop.
"No. No, she didn't. Pam didn't do shit, Villanelle. I was there! I stayed there! I watched you drown. I watched your body float away. I watched you swim towards me, I watched you get shot, I watched you go still. It's as simple as that, okay? I never thought it could be so fucking simple but it is. I saw you alive and then I saw you dead. I know what a corpse looks like. God. This is so fucking rich. Even as a ghost — or some fucked-up figment of my imagination, I don't know what to call this, I don't care! — you are so fucking stubborn. You are always so fucking stubborn. I thought I would beg for this. I thought I wanted this. I don't. God, you need — "
And Eve chuckles in a way that signifies ribs cracking, stomach sinking, heart breaking, chuckles through the tears like she's biting through flesh, and Villanelle stares. Too quiet. Dispirited.
"I need what, Eve?"
"You need to let yourself die, Villanelle."
Villanelle's ghost, once pleading and petulant, goes very still. Her hands stay at her sides. She doesn't reach out for Eve, because she is not as stubborn as Eve's Villanelle, who would reach across realms, and splay her palm out to defy physics, to touch skin, to breathe life one last time. Eve's Villanelle, who is so stubborn, but not stubborn enough, to survive.
And Eve doesn't know how to divorce ghosts, or say goodbye to her delusions, so she settles for French Exit. She leaves Villanelle's ghost standing sticky in the middle of the kitchen as she pads down the hallway. As she slams the door to a room once-shared. As she lowers herself into a sleeping bag that is losing its scent of purple shampoo. She doesn't hear Villanelle after that.
And as Eve tosses and turns, and does not sleep, and does not hear so much as a door creaking, or a fire being stoked, she thinks about the way Villanelle's ghost lies through dead teeth.
Eve thinks that if any outcome is to exist, it is not one where Pam reached through river water to grasp Villanelle's hand. No. Not in a world where Eve swam down, kicked up, propelled her body through current, and still couldn't even manage a touch. No.
When Eve sleeps, she dreams about mundane things. Doing the dishes. Stocking the fridge. Sunlight streaming through the window. In her dreams, Villanelle isn't there.
She usually is.
Villanelle isn't there.
III. Depression
When Eve wakes, the cabin has collected snow like a drought savors rain. She peeks out the window of the room where she sleeps and only sees white. Treetops blanketed, soil replaced with cotton, air visible with shimmer. She shivers. Buries deeper into blanket. Never gets warm.
When she spends too many hours thinking about how long hauntings can last, or how long it takes one to adapt to insanity, Eve gets up. She pads a trail of trepidation out to the living room. And if sanity is something to be adapted to, Eve doesn't feel adapted as she stands stark-still in the kitchen of a cabin that feels unrecognizable. Spotless cabin. No Villanelle.
White sunlight streams through the windows to reveal an empty sink, dishes in the drying rack, counters void of trash; charred wood removed from its resting spot in the fireplace. She blinks.
On the counter, there's a ceramic plate with bacon spread out over a drenched paper towel. There's coffee sitting in a mug. Not instant coffee. She smells the difference. There's toast sitting popped in the toaster. Not white bread. Brown bread with seeds coating the crust. Jam sits in jars with sealed lids. Apricot, grape, strawberry. Eve's stomach growls; betrays her.
This is what ghosts do. They try to convince you sites of decay are Heaven. No.
This is what insanity does. It convinces you of reality. Reality represented in jellies and coffee ground just right and a lack of mold. It's not real. She'll bite into toast and taste soil. And if bites into toast and tastes bread, it's even more not real.
Eve stands rooted in the same spot when the front door opens. That creak is the same — quiet and aching — as Villanelle opens it enough to reveal herself wiping her boots on the welcome mat. Eve watches as she kicks snow off of her boots, slides boots off to reveal socked feet, steps in slowly, looks up, stills. Her eyes go wide and soft, body goes still, because ghosts are good at maintaining performances. Encores and curtain draws and it all starts over again.
"Good morning." Villanelle whispers, as she closes the door behind her. "Afternoon, I guess."
Eve squints. She hasn't paid attention to time and concepts of time in days. Months.
"You're still here," Eve's lips barely move.
Villanelle wipes her hands on her pants. Eve watches Villanelle fingers splay over the material. Grey pants. Creme knit-sweater. Eve tenses her jaw. Ghosts perform encores on stages that are still ridden with flowers. Ghosts stick around for Bravo! Ghosts stick around. Ghosts stick.
Eve points to the sweater, whispers, "Where did you get that?"
Villanelle looks down. Touches the sleeve.
"My bag was still in the camper van. You left the door unlocked." Villanelle smiles small, "Actually, you left the key in the ignition, too."
Eve entertains Villanelle's eye contact for a few moments. When she tears her eyes away, she settles on staring at the jars of jelly.
The smell of fat and grease churn her stomach.
Villanelle follows her eyes. Eve can't help but notice from her periphery how attuned Villanelle's ghost is to her movements. How Villanelle stands like a stubborn compass, body turned towards Eve, how her eyes follow hers, how her palms maintain an itch that leaves her tangling her fingers in the fabric of her sweater. Villanelle clears her throat; gestures towards the table.
"You should eat, Eve."
And if Villanelle wants flowers thrown at her feet before the curtain closes, Eve will do no such thing. But she will entertain insanity if that means she's spared the salt of anchovies and the artifice of off-brand peanut butter. Villanelle moves to fix her a plate. Eve rolls her eyes.
She sits at the table. The wooden chair creaks with quiet and ache and Eve is starting to get tired of the noise wood makes when it taunts you.
She does not watch Villanelle as she plucks bacon from paper towels to deposit onto plates, or as she picks up a knife to butter toast, and hesitates between the three jellies, because she doesn't know what Eve likes, and Eve doesn't chew too hard on the fact that a product of her imagination ought to know these things, and she doesn't look up as Villanelle treks to the table with a plate of food and a mug of coffee, and sets it in front of her very gently. Too gently.
Eve notices the bacon is fried without char. Notices the toast is crisped to perfection. This Villanelle, not her Villanelle, is getting it all wrong.
Villanelle sits in the chair across from her. Eve doesn't look up as she sips at her coffee. She can't help the sigh that escapes her. If insanity means no more instant Nestle, she'll indulge insanity at breakfast time. As she picks up a knife to butter her toast, she stills a slow glance at Villanelle.
"Aren't you going to eat?"
Villanelle's eyebrows raise, nervous laugh, "I already did. You slept for a long time, Eve."
And Eve doesn't nod, doesn't give any response, as she lets her eyes drop back to her place. She busies herself with spreading strawberry jelly over bread and Villanelle's shoulders seem to jerk with awareness. Eve didn't realize she presented a challenge. But as Villanelle stands up too quickly, and reaches across the table in a jerked movement, and steals a piece of bacon, and waits until Eve is watching to put in her mouth, and makes a show of chewing and swallow, Eve digs her nails into her palm when she realizes what she's doing. If I wasn't real, could I do this?
Yes, Villanelle. You can do anything.
Villanelle swallows loud. Eve eats quiet. The cabin falls into that quiet that is too quiet, where you convince yourself you can hear slow collecting on the roof, and the only thing that begs reality is the sound of a butterknife scraping against toasted bread, and Eve feels a lump in her throat as she tastes strawberries and grease. She eats greedily. Quietly.
She swallows, taps her fingers on the mug when she asks, "Where did you get all of this?"
And Villanelle answers too quickly. Too eager. Nearly cuts Eve off. And this Villanelle, not her Villanelle, gets it all wrong. Eve's Villanelle wields patience like a burnt tongue. Never waiting in the first place. Taking sips while the water is still scalding.
"There's a Primark a few miles out. I drove the camper van there." And before Eve can respond, Villanelle is talking too fast, blinking too much, rubbing her hands on her pants. "This is how I found out where you were, Eve. Helene's phone. It was still in the camper van. I made Pam trace it."
Eve raises an eyebrow.
"This was before I killed her."
Eve stops chewing on the bread in her mouth. Struggles to not spit it out. Swallows it slowly.
And because she is arguing with a ghost, and logic is not found in cabins where women are haunted by the corpses of their Lovers, Eve asks.
"You killed Pam?"
Villanelle's eyes are blank. "Yes."
"Why?"
"She tried to get me to leave with her."
Eve stares.
"She told me you were dead."
And Eve stares. Stares, and stares, and stares, until she laughs. God, it's rich. This haunting.
This reminder.
Eve's fingers tighten around the metallic of the butterknife.
"No. You're dead."
And Villanelle's jaw is tense. Eve watches how the ghost arranges her face. She does it well. She's almost mastered it. The way Villanelle's eyes go glassy. The way Villanelle's jaw is tense with chalk teeth, mouth holding not anger, but grief, so much grief that she doesn't know how to release it, grief that slices the tongue, grief that barely moves the lips.
"Eve. Listen to me." And Villanelle is leaning over the table, letting her elbows fall soft on old wood, holding out palms that Eve won't reach for, "I did not die in the Thames. I lived. Pam — "
"Pam didn't do shit, Villanelle! I was there! I watched your body get sucked into the wake. You died a shitty, quick death. I watched it happen!"
And Villanelle narrows her eyebrows, closes her lips, before she tries again,
"Did you?"
"What?"
"My body? Did you watch it float all the way down?"
And Eve scrunches her face up. Smiles. Shakes her head,
"I didn't need to. You were dead before I could even swim over to you, Villanelle. There — "
"But you did not see my body float down? And you did not see my body, at all? After that?"
And the room burns with the itch of Eve's belly, the itch of the psychological warfare being imposed by something intangible, and Eve thinks about killing herself with a butter knife, the slow, shitty way, and Villanelle is raising herself out of her chair, to say,
"I did not die in that river, Eve. Pam was watching the whole thing. I was pulled in the current of a passing boat and I hit a rock near the shore. That is how I got this," Villanelle points a finger at the scar on her eyebrow, as if this makes it real, as if ghosts can't paint pretty pictures of reality. She lowers her hand before she continues, "Pam pulled me out from the shore. She didn't even have to get in the water. I have spent the last month trying to come back to you. This is why I killed her! Even when she was pulling metal out of my chest, and even when she was sedating me so my fever wouldn't kill me, I was trying to come back."
And Villanelle's throat bobs, and Eve watches as the ghost curates tears, and lets them pool in the lash line of Villanelle's eyes, but doesn't let them fall, so good, this ghost,
"I was always trying to come back to you. I am sorry it took me so long, okay? I'm sorry!"
Villanelle gives a wet laugh. Stares down at Eve with red eyes.
"I thought you might cut me some slack over the whole almost-dying thing."
"Can you leave?" Eve barks.
Villanelle's eyes go wide. Brows go narrow.
"What?"
"I don't know how this works. This... haunting, or whatever," Eve gestures to the space between them, "and I don't know how to make it stop so I'm asking you. If you're able to pull bread out of thin air, and you're able to put new scars on your body, you must be able to leave. Can you?"
And Villanelle steps back. Recoils. In that still and slow kind of way. That same kind of a way a body might recoil when it's shot underneath water with more than a few bullets. Slow dance.
"I can't do that, Eve."
"Why?"
"I can't leave you. I'm sorry. I won't do it. Not again."
And this is what surviving does to you. It names you as captive. Surviving means Lovers go float to the bottom of the Earth, without the respect of being buried underneath, and surviving means you have to life with their aftermath, while they haunt above Earth, with something to prove. And Eve blinks hard, keeps her eyes closed, breaths out in laughter, breathes out in shake,
"God. You really believe this, don't you?"
"What, Eve?"
"That you're alive."
"I am alive."
And Eve stands up in a way that sends the chair screeching backwards. Stands up to point a finger at Villanelle, to shriek, and scream,
"No, you aren't! You are dead! This doesn't make sense, Villanelle! If Pam stuck around to pull you out of the river, she would have seen me. Dragging myself out of the water just to dive back in. I was in that water for hours, okay? Is this what you want to hear? No, I didn't see your fucking body float down. But I searched for it. For hours. Until the sun came up. She would have seen me. God, you're somehow more stubborn even when you're dead, and I know you want to believe you survived, and I wanted to believe you survived — God, I did — but you just fucking didn't, okay? Pam is probably the one who pulled the trigger. Who killed you."
And Eve is stepping towards her. And Villanelle doesn't step back. Her and Eve stand like soldiers unable to share burdened weight. Swapping stories in lieu of bullets, trading arguments like warfare, all of this to say: My reality is the real one, and you are living somewhere else, and please, God, if you can't come back to me, then just accept this one. Eve cries tears like snowfall and Villanelle reaches out to catch them, but Eve fists her hands in the fabric of her knit-sweater, and pushes her back. She watches as Villanelle's ghost goes clumsy, then goes straight, rights herself, and balls her fists at her side. Eve's hands shake with contact. Her stomach turns.
Touching ghosts means you will always be sick. Eve swallows bile.
"If Pam pulled you out of the river, she would have seen everything, okay? She would have seen me begging my body to drown, and my inability to do it because I'm a fucking coward, I'm not like you, Villanelle, and she would have seen me be dragged out of the Thames by college boys on fucking jet skis. Christ."
Villanelle's eyes soften. Her lips fall open, so slight, but open. Eve yells,
"I need you to fucking stop this, okay? To leave. Because I can do a lot of things, Villanelle, and I can figure out how to live without you until I can figure out how to kill myself, but I can't do this."
Eve breathes heavy, and Villanelle's head lolls soft, and she smiles small, always small now that she's dead, and she says very gently,
"I won't leave, Eve. I'm sorry."
And Eve kicks a chair, sends it flying to the wall, pushes her plate off the table, too. Content to see things shatter. Content to access material reality through shatter and break and destruction.
"Then please, just, fucking go away for a while. Outside or whatever. I need you to just not be here, right now. In front of me. Making a case for your survival. I can't do it."
Villanelle lets her head fall back, stares at the ceiling, lets her fish unclench, and all of these things are indicative of a temporary white flag. She sighs as she grabs her puffer jacket off the back of the chair. Her movements are slow, sticky, trekking a trail of Eternity, and it feels like years die by the time Villanelle reaches the door, but she pauses with her hand on the knob. She turns slowly to look at Eve over her shoulder.
"Jet skis?"
"What?" Eve barks.
"You said college boys on jet skis pulled you out of the Thames."
"Yes." Eve pinches the bridge of her nose, "That's what happened."
Villanelle glues, and unglues her lips, and when she speaks, it's barely in a breath, like she doesn't mean to say it out loud, or maybe she does, but she definitely doesn't mean for Eve to hear when she says:
"Jet skis aren't allowed on the Thames."
And Villanelle turns the knob, and the wood of the door creaks with quiet and ache, and Villanelle's sudden absence hits Eve in a way that ghosts shouldn't be able to, but Eve is hit, and left standing in a room that is too quiet to make sense of what she's just heard.
IIII. Acceptance
Eve lays in bed. Villanelle doesn't come back for hours. She does come back though, and Eve presumes ghosts are good on their word because they have nothing else to do. Eve listens to the door close. Eve listens as wood is rearranged in the fireplace. Eve listens as Villanelle gets the fire to catchy quickly, unlike Eve, and she listens as Villanelle pokes at it. Sparks embers with nonchalance.
And when Eve can't take it anymore, she gets out of bed.
She finds Villanelle sitting in front of the fire. She's leaned back on splayed palms, and when Eve approaches, Villanelle doesn't lift vacant eyes from flame. The room smell swelters with warmth and smoke. When Eve looks closely, she realizes Villanelle placed the wood with tact and structure, and where Eve is incapable of letting flames spread without putting themselves out, Villanelle is always capable of such, in life or death. And when Eve sits down next to her, and crosses her arms around her legs, Villanelle doesn't look at her, but asks questions first this time,
So quiet,
"How long have you been in this cabin, Eve?"
And Eve raises her eyebrows. Lets her eyes fall from Villanelle's profile to flames blazing.
"I don't know."
"What did you do after?" Villanelle swallows. "After you were pulled out, I mean?"
"They took me to the hospital. I was sedated. They sewed me up. When I woke up, I left." Eve sighs, lets her hands fall back on carpet, mirrors Villanelle's position, "I killed Carolyn."
And Eve notices the way Villanelle's fingers curls against the carpet.
Notices the way Villanelle's chest moves with small breaths.
The way her eyes go glassy, alit with orange hues.
"Pam told me she killed Carolyn."
And there are moments in this life, where the line between reality and fiction is ripped away and decimated, times when you are left to understand that the majority of your living life is spent just trying to survive,
and that the majority of this survival entertains competition in which you are trying to prove, at the very least, that you are less insane than the other,
and in this moment, when the finish line is moved back, like it has been countless times before, and neither of you are left with the title of winner, you are forced to reconsider the value of sanity,
and whether it is sanity or insanity that makes that surviving subversive,
and whether it ever, ever, mattered in the first place,
and there are moments in this life, but there is one moment in this life, that happens to you only once, the way it is happening to you right now, where you realize,
no, it never really mattered.
And as Eve feels the warmth of the fire against the knobs of her knees, and she listens to the ghost of Villanelle's breathing that sounds all too real, really, all she can do is smile.
She looks at Villanelle. Villanelle looks at her. Trails the curve of Eve's mouth with confused eyes. Muddied with misery, and grief, because she hasn't crossed the finish line yet. And Eve asks,
"Did Pam do it justice at least?"
And Villanelle catches a smile like a germ she doesn't want. Eve watches as she tries to fight the curl of her lips, as tears run subtle trails to collect in the corners of her mouth, and Villanelle laughs,
"No. She told me she shot her in the head." Villanelle wipes at her mouth, "Boring as shit."
Eve rolls her eyes. Nudges Villanelle with her shoulder. Lets her eyes fall on the fire.
"So, what? I'm the dead one, then?"
And Eve wants to deliver her words with a light heart, turn the stone over, but Villanelle's smile fades, and Villanelle curls in around her legs, as she rests her cheek on her knee, to look at Eve:
"I don't know, Eve. I really don't." She whispers, and Eve has to wonder if this is the same way she may have spoken to a Jesus who was never there, but she does it with such sincerity that Eve knows this is not about prayers or make-believe, this is about the reality of them when she says,
"But I think you might be."
And Eve bites her lip. Gives a slow nod. Can't help it when she releases lip from tooth to boom a laugh. Villanelle's shoulders jump. She stares wide-eyed. Eve rolls her eyes.
"I can't believe you outlived me. Bitch."
And Villanelle raises an eyebrow, and Eve frowns, the fire cracks in song and flame to fill the brief silences left between them while they play catch-up, while they play, but don't win,
"Wait, you're alive, right?" Eve looks her over, thinks of Pam, and interactions with other people, and going to the store, and buying bread and jam, "Obviously."
And Villanelle, her Villanelle, who is melodramatic and sensitive and carries her heart like a stone in her pocket, bites her lip to keep from trembling, tries to smile, makes her face look all weird, moves her head with a gentle shake to say,
"Mm." Villanelle laughs, sounds like a cry, "No, Eve. Not without you."
Eve smacks her shoulder. Villanelle raises her head with quirked brows.
"Don't start. Come here."
"What?"
"Don't start," Eve warns. Opens her arm, speaks clearly, not gently, "Come here."
Villanelle is too hesitant, too slow, for a living thing, when she slowly pushes her palms against the carpet to worm her way closer to Eve, to collapse into her side, to share her weight, to rest, and Eve burdens her, pulls her flush against her side, wraps an arm around her like she can soothe ruffled feathers, and Eve is born not from nurture, but Eve is dead for Love, so she learns.
Villanelle cries into the fabric of Eve's shoulder. Eve runs fingers through crisp hair, half-wet from snow, half-warmed by fire, she shushes, she coos, she runs a splayed palm over Villanelle's spine. But Villanelle never settles, and she doesn't stop, so Eve removes her hand from Villanelle's back, moves in front of Villanelle, gets on her knees in front of fire, lowers herself onto Villanelle's lap, to slot her thighs on either side of Villanelle's hips while Villanelle looks up with eyes blossomed red, and lips trembling with shake. Eve burdens Villanelle, ties her to the Earth with a body that is either real or not real, and it doesn't matter, because Villanelle feels it.
"What are you doing?" Villanelle whispers. Eve reads Villanelle's mouth like palm lines. Like a tarot card flipped up. Like no explanation needed.
Hungry for Eve's kiss. Non-romantic. Hungry to make it real.
"Shh," Eve whispers, as she lowers her hands to the fabric of Villanelle's sweater, and waits for Villanelle to catch up, to put her arms up this time, to swim up, and Villanelle finally gets it.
Eve lifts the sweater over Villanelle's head and throws it on the chair. Neither look away.
Villanelle, not from Eve's face. Eve, not from Villanelle's body.
In the dim-light of the fire, where Villanelle's skin is painted orange and alive, Eve holds her breath as she traces fingers to collarbone, as she traces finger to scar tissue, as she lets her fingers splay over the white-seal of flesh that rests above Villanelle's breast and below her clavicle. Whilte seal of confirmation. Eve breathes shallow breathes. And just for assurance, because Eve does not need to look to see, but she does want to touch, she lets her hand slide over the slope of Villanelle's shoulder, trail the base of her spine, until she feels it. Over the blade of Villanelle's shoulder, Eve finds three more seals. Three more confirmations. Long-since stitched. Sealed.
"Oh, honey."
Eve breathes out. Bites her lip to keep her smile from spreading. Knows she's crying. Does not care. Her weight collapses against Villanelle, hips weighted to keep her rooted, and Eve lets her fingers return to Villanelle's face. She traces the new scar that splits her brow hairs. So thin, fine enough to not be real, but Eve knows it is.
And when Eve has touched every part of Villanelle's body that has been left scarred and sealed, besides the one that Eve gave to Villanelle herself, because that has always been real, will always be real, she lets her hands cup Villanelle's cheeks. She breathes in shake, smiles in tremble, cries quiet, talks in victory,
"You survived."
And Villanelle smiles through the tears, but her hands are too quick, too needy, and when she reaches for the fabric of Eve's shirt, Eve grabs her wrist to stop her. "Not now," she whispers.
Not now.
Because insanity is a one-way mirror. It does not matter if one is living and one is dead. And this is what surviving does to you. It makes you insane. It turns sore losers into humble winners. Because not now means Eve is content to cherish the scarred tissue of Villanelle's skin, to let Villanelle see it, to whisper breath into her mouth, but she is not content to pull up her own shirt, to let Villanelle find what may be a black hole over her heart, or a bullet wound still-bleeding. Because there is one moment in this life, that happens to you only once, the way it is happening to you right now, and it does not matter if you are living or dead, where you realize,
no, it never really mattered.
"Eve," Villanelle warns. Furrows her brows. Curls her hands into fabric to try again.
"No." Eve holds both of her wrists. Shakes her head. "Villanelle, it doesn't matter."
And Villanelle smiles in scoff, confused eyes, whispers, "It matters to me."
"Villanelle," Eve warns. "Not now."
And Villanelle's jaw tenses, and Eve watches the argument form in her throat, and Eve sighs,
"Later. If you still want to, later. Not now."
If I am dead, put me to rest later. For now, I'm in your lap.
And Eve doesn't have to say any of this out loud, because Villanelle catches her eye just the right way, so Villanelle doesn't have to challenge her with her talk, doesn't have to ask out loud to say:
So what are you going to do about it?
Villanelle's eyes lose challenge, accept surrender, which looks sharper than challenge, when she leans up to capture Eve's lips between her own. Villanelle, her Villanelle, wields patience the very same way Eve does, sipping scalding water from the same cup, which is to say that Villanelle wastes no time slipping her tongue between Eve's teeth, and Eve wastes no time driving her hips into Villanelle's lower belly, and shirts stay on, and pants only go unbuttoned, but they don't go removed, and Eve's underwear is only pushed to the side, because Villanelle, her Villanelle, is all greed, all glory, fingers sliding past cotton, fingers curling inside, fingers pumping and fingers uncaring if they're unable to prove reality, and when Eve comes apart, panting, still sat in Villanelle's lap with fire heating her back, it does not matter if she is dead or alive, because it is not desire that transcends realms to coax lovers apart with fingers, and it is not desire that allows palms to be bucked into in a way that defies physics, because it was desire once, and it will never be desire again, because it is never that simple, not when desire cohabitates with Love, the same way the living may cohabitate with dead.
This is not about shared graves, or pulling the trigger at the same time, because these things are no longer subversive.
This is just about surviving.
What it does to you.
And when Eve splays Villanelle out on her back, spreads her on the carpet, and does not leave her clothed, and, instead, lets fire illuminate the splotched red of Villanelle's chest, and the wetness of Villanelle's want, Eve is reminded that Villanelle, her Villanelle, is as ungentle as she is careful, in the way she tangles her fingers in Eve's hair, and pushes Eve flush against her want, and barely allows her breath outside of this want, and she thinks Villanelle must be banking on the fact that Eve is dead, the way she is testing Eve's lung capacity, and Eve will do it the right way this time, lungs unflooded with river water, but suffocated by the thighs of a Lover who takes as much as she gives, and Villanelle is greedy and loud, so loud, when she comes apart, screaming, not saying, screaming Eve's name that has nothing to do with prayers, or make-believe, but just reality, shrieked through cabin, over and over, and over again: Eve!
This is what surviving does to you. It makes you do everything all wrong. This is where you're supposed to have sex until you're too raw, too sensitive, because there is no way to know how Time works when Time transcends realms. That you're banking on each moment, unsure if you'll disappear when the clock reaches its next tick, and that Love is always just a waiting game, but Villanelle and Eve are time-wasters.
They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Because when Villanelle comes undone, they do not start again.
In the glow of the fire that is too hot, over-stimulating almost, Eve crawls up the length of Villanelle's body and curls into her. And Villanelle does not make the mistake of reaching for the fabric of Eve's shirt before they fall asleep, and Eve rewards her with wet kisses to her jaw, and gentle fingers over her clavicle, and they fall asleep before the fire even gets put out. Because this is what surviving does to you.
It makes you reconsider rest.
IIII. Acceptance (Act 2)
When Eve wakes the next morning, it is not because of the ungentle way that Villanelle snores. It would be a nice way to wake up. Reminded of her survival. Eve does not wake up because the smell of charred wood has cloaked their bodies in campfire scent — the kind that takes three showers and half a bar of Dove soap. Eve does not wake up because Villanelle woke up first.
Eve wakes up to voices. They're shrill on her ears. For the unidentifiable amount of time that Eve has spent not-surviving, she has only heard her own voice or Villanelle's. Heard her voice as Villanelle's. This is why it takes her a second to place the sounds, amidst the jangle of keys, and footsteps heavy with snow. But she does, place them, and these sounds are placed as: Loved-up hikers.
Eve nudges Villanelle's hip with her thigh. Villanelle groans, pout-lip and crinkle-brow. Eve shoves. Villanelle blinks awake. In the distance, the concern of hushed voices carry heavy in the snow. Villanelle sits up, wide-eyed and alert. Eve does too. They look at each other. Villanelle reaches for her pants. Puts them on all wrong, one-legged dance. Eve watches.
In the few seconds that exist between voices outside and voices inside, before a door creaks with quiet and ache, Villanelle and Eve knows what their future entails. That Loved-up hikers will come in to shatter the facade. That Loved-up hikers will enter into a Cabin where they see a half-naked Villanelle splayed alone, and the world will re-shatter and threaten insanity, because this is what happens when another's reality confirms our own, when that reality is:
You are alone.
The door creaks, and reality shatters, and Eve watches as Maggie and Donnie enter into a cabin where they are met with the image of Villanelle half-dressed standing alone in their living room. Chest bare, wounds displayed, all out in the open. Eve sits in a mess of blankets.
"You," Donnie's voice shakes, as he points at Villanelle. "You stole our camper van!"
Maggie moves to stand behind Donnie. And if Eve had more time to register that, she would think something about how Lovers that bond over swapped kidneys, and not much else, never stand together, very much in the same way they don't piss behind shared bushes.
"Um, yes." Villanelle quirks her brow. Rests palms on her hips. Shrugs. "Sorry?"
And Eve lingers in that anticipation of What comes next? The anticipation is sweet when it involves wondering how what Villanelle will use to kill them. The anticipation is dreadful when Villanelle's eyes are the only ones to fall on her, nobody else, just hers, and to watch Villanelle's face drop in the same way a body floats down.
Eve stirs on the floor, and raises herself up on her haunches. She stares over the couch as Maggie pokes out from behind Donnie. She points at Villanelle, first, and then Eve watches as time slows, the way it does when you are caught in the in-between, as Maggie's finger slowly refocuses its aims until it's pointed at Eve herself.
"And you!" Maggie gapes, "You're — you're all over the News!"
And the room goes so quiet. Maggie and Donnie breathe labored breaths but that's all.
Eve looks behind her, looks up at Villanelle's whose eyes are dangerously close to widening with hope, and Eve looks back to Maggie, before pointing at herself, "Me?"
"Yes, you! You escaped from the Hospital! Polastri, right? That's your last name? You had a husband! We gave you a place to stay and you lied to the both of us!"
And sometimes, reality wobbles, but it does not shatter, because the line between reality and non-reality is always fine, always a tight-rope walk, and when the rope bends, but does not break, well — you just have to take that for what it is.
Villanelle looks at Eve. Eve looks at Villanelle. It is Villanelle's lips who split first. Wide-mouthed smile, showing teeth, because sometimes, insanity is reserved for the next life, and this time,
you are spared,
or, this time,
You Survived.
Eve and Villanelle break into maniacal laughter at the same time. Tears, even when it seems as if there are no more tears for the body to produce, find ways to pool in your eyes, and you're left laughing, with a half-naked lover, while a paired of Lover-up hikers stare in a silence that walks the line between disturbed and fearful. Villanelle is still laughing as she notices Donnie's hand go to his back pocket. Eve can't stop even as she watches Donnie pull his phone out; type in his passcode.
"Oh, no." Villanelle's shoulders shake. She wipes a tear from her eye. "Bad move."
And Villanelle is a vision half-dressed, shoulders shaking with Euphoria, as she prowls towards Lovers who have terrible response time, because they haven't prepared for situations like this, and they would sacrifice organs for one another, but they don't know how to sacrifice themselves for each other, so they back themselves further into the corner of the room.
Eve gets up.
When Donnie grabs Maggie's hand and goes for the door, Villanelle catches him by the wrist. When Villanelle pulls Donnie with enough force to unclasp him from his Lover's hand, Eve is already there, already ready, to grab Maggie by the shoulders. Donnie is backed towards the door; only allows a moment of hesitation, of looking at his Lover, of looking at Villanelle, before he makes a bee-line for the snow. Villanelle chases after him. Eve holds Maggie by the shoulders.
"Please don't," she cries. "I won't report the van. I won't report you. I don't care. Just please."
But Eve wastes no time as she forces Maggie towards the kitchen window. Grabs a kitchen knife. She pinks Maggie to the sink with her thighs. Maggie faced towards the window. Eve, behind her, knife to her throat. Outside, Donnie trips and falls over and over. His body propels towards the snow, and he picks himself out of it, and propels once more. Behind him, Villanelle treks a slow trail. She's picked up an axe. Eve watches Villanelle, her Villanelle, take wide strides, snow catching in her hair like a thing that is real, like a thing that is capable of melting snow with body heat, like an image of violence waiting to paint white snow red. Maggie screams.
"No!"
Eve sighs. She grabs Maggie's jaw with her left hand.
"I know you can't watch each other piss. Can you watch each other die? Do you want that?"
Maggie squirms. Thrashes her chin about to attempt to loosen the grip of Eve's fingers.
"Listen," Eve whispers, through stern teeth. "I'm asking you, seriously. I'm sorry this happened to you. These things — they're not about fate, you know? You either get lucky or you don't."
Eve notices an itch swell above her collarbone. This is what surviving does to you.
It reminds you.
"You just happened to come home. You got unlucky. And I'm sorry." Eve lets her gaze fall back to the window, where Villanelle is pulling Donnie by the labels of his coat, and turning him onto his back, and she's raising the axe. Eve and Villanelle are lovers bonded by swapped scars, by understanding knit deep into the marrow, by survival etched deeper. Which means:
She has to watch. She needs to watch. She wants to watch.
So, she needs Maggie to make a decision quick.
Villanelle raises the axe.
"Yes or no? Quick."
Maggie thrashes her head. Screams. Sobs. "God, no!"
"Okay. Sorry."
And Eve slits Maggie's throat mere moments before Villanelle lets the axe slice the air. Maggie collapses to the floor right before Donnie's blood splatters the snow.
Almost reaching synchronicity, but just out-of-step. Dying together, all the same, Eve supposes.
Frost collects on the window, but it doesn't obscure Eve's view. Villanelle stands as a sight against the pale snow, chest heaving, hair falling in her face, red everywhere. The snow falls gently, so slowly, and even from here, Eve can see the way the snow collects in the blood pooled on Villanelle's forearms. Donnie's body lays bleeding out at her feet. Spooling into serene landscape like a story told all wrong. Maggie and Donnie's was. Eve and Villanelle's wasn't. Sorry.
Eve steps over Maggie's body to sprint out the door. She's barefoot. She trips over snow, and doesn't slow down, and Villanelle turns slowly to watch Eve come back to her, drops the axe to the snow with a quiet thud just in time, as Eve collides with her body like things deserving, like angels in the snow, like angels who fought to remain on Earth, like nothing angelic about it.
Villanelle collapses onto her back with Eve atop of her. Underneath their bodies, the snow is soiled with iron and barbarity, and Eve watches the way Villanelle's hair splays out of it. All of these colors — platinum, and white, and cherry — mixed together in a terrible pallet. The snow prickles Villanelle's cheeks colored, it splotches her chest in red, it barbs her skin in goose feathers, Eve touches them, runs her hands over her upper arms, and Eve is attuned to every breath, every puff of air that meets the air, that is warm enough to spell out Survival.
And Eve looks confused, straddled upon Villanelle's hips, brow quirked, and lips pulled down, she looks confused, caught up amidst snowfall and violence, when she says, "I love you."
Because she didn't need to say it. Never needed to. This is what surviving does to you.
It makes you say it.
And Villanelle's eyes go wide, go soft at the corners, and her chest pushes out an inaudible laugh, as she reaches up to push Eve's hair out of her face. "Because you are alive?"
Eve shakes her head.
"No."
"Okay," Villanelle whispers, in the same breath she uses to reach up, to press her lips into Eve's, like two Loved-up hikers caught up in gentle snowfall, like two Lovers caught up in gentle.
IIII. Acceptance (final act)
They don't have to drive long before they stop at the same Truck stop. Eve will buy curly fries and mustard and be accused of things like psychopathy, and Villanelle will buy meat this time too, bags of beef jerky, because they will be on the road for a long time.
No Revels. Not risking it.
And before Eve steps up to the counter, Villanelle's eyes will catch a magazine. She'd recognize that hair anywhere.
She'll run her fingers over it, hand it to Eve, so Eve can see:
MISSING WOMAN: FORMER MI5 AGENT EVE POLASTRI ESCAPES HOSPITAL, CONFIRMED SUSPECT IN THE STRANGULATION OF FORMER BOSS CAROLYN MARTENS
And Eve and Villanelle will kiss in the food court of the Truck stop, where the smell of salt and frying oil lingers heavy, and they will have to leave before they are recognized, but not before they buy curly fries and meat, because insanity is a one-way mirror,
and it does not matter if one is living and one is dead,
and it matters less when both are living,
because,
no, it never mattered.
This is what surviving does to you. It makes you insane.
And when Jet Skits are not allowed on the Thames, and people lie about killing other people,
most importantly,
surviving does not have to make sense.