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【 reseda, 2018 】
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━━ Даже после смерти ты никогда не будешь свободен.
Even in death, you will never be free.
Those words had been imprinted into her head. Those words had literally chained themselves to her. She resented it to her core, the thin chain fastened around her wrist. It wasn't as painful as the handcuffs she used to sleep with in the Red Room, but it was a painful thing to look at nonetheless.
It was a shame that it was such a beautiful thing: there was nothing Stevie wished to do more than break her chain. She didn't like that she had resorted to hiding it.
Everyone was too distracted with Johnny weaving in between the students and lashing out with pointed insults to notice the way that Stevie twisted her fingers around her wrapped wrist. The fabric of the headband was thin, age had not been kind to it.
The chain was a thin vibranium alloy, surgically attached to the wrist of each of her remaining peers. ( One of two graduation gifts the girls received when they completed the first cycle of the Red Room: the other was far more invasive. ) Each chain donned twelve starry attachments related to their call signs. Each attachment read the heartbeat of the girl that shared its name.
As Stevie's class dwindled down to four, so had the constellations on her wrist. All that remained was Andromeda, Aquila, Orion, and Cassiopeia.
Sometimes, she preferred her scars to this fucking shackle.
The things that had earned her scars had been the source of her nightmares, but the world did not need to know that. To them, scars could come from anything. It was easy for her to come up with lies for the clean, white scars that littered her body, as well as the fresher, more jagged scars. It was easier to look at herself because she had never known her body without them. Her scars unequivocally belonged to her.
This stupid piece of metal would bind her to the Red Room for the rest of her life. When she died, her remains would be ashes, bones, and that goddamn chain.
They told her, didn't they?
Even in death, Stevie will never be free.
( No wonder freedom felt like such a slap in the face. )
