Spectacle of Souls

2:5 - Red and White Morality

Dace's palm had been glued to the base of her throat for an hour as she waited outside the door to carriage eleven. As the audience's cheers for the finale were reduced to a faint ringing in the back of her ears Dace knew that what Eliot had said was impossible: she could feel her own heartbeat, of course she could! Her skin was warm, and her breath was steady. There was always the chance she was imagining her own pulse, but Dace forced this conclusion aside.

"I am alive." She repeated to herself, "Of course I am."

The Ringleader looked up at her over the brim of his hat. "You are not alive. But, if it is any kind of compensation, you are not quite dead either."

"That's impossible."

"Yes." The Ringleader turned to her stiffly, wiping perspiration from his brow. Was she imagining it, or was the slightest trace of anxiety creeping into his tone?

"You and Matt—Mathilda. Are you friends?"

"In a sense. Your face is bleeding," The Ringleader pulled back her hair indifferently, eyes drawn to the mark left by Eliot's knife.

Her stomach flipped at his touch, and she flinched away. "It's nothing. According to you, it doesn't matter—it's not like I'm gonna bleed to death."

"Wounds can still become infected." The Ringleader slid off his left glove, revealing a cut that stretched between the base of his thumb and the knuckle of his ring finger. Around the scab his fair skin had been smeared with greens and browns, and the wound itself looked almost septic.

"Ew."

"See? I'll ask Ambrose for a first aid kit."

They sat in silence on the bench in the hallway with Dace leaning forwards as he dabbed at the cut on her cheek with antiseptic-soaked cotton wool.  The space between them was so scarce that she could see every unkempt whisker on his face and take in the scent of fresh air that clung to his sleeves.  He was, she realised, a lot younger than she'd first assumed—he couldn't have been far past the age of twenty.  It was weird, she thought, that he was tending to the cut on her cheek so diligently when he'd ripped a hole through a guy barely two hours ago. Not that this wasn't painful— the antiseptic stung like a burn and Dace could barely suppress a pathetic hiss.

"Is it bad?" The Ringleader didn't sound very empathetic.

"Not as bad as..." Dace gestured to the infirmary door. "Will Matt be okay?"

"She's been through worse than this."

"I don't understand what happened," Dace continued in a flat tone as a bandage was pressed to her cheek, "Did you know Eliot was really like that?"

The Ringleader narrowed his eyes. "I suspected."

Dace shivered involuntarily as she recalled his creepy smile. "He didn't seem—he seemed like a nice guy. I wasn't expecting him to—to..."

"What happened, exactly?"

Dace froze up. The spear—Matt's spear—had come into her possession thanks to Eliot's manipulation. Like an idiot, she hadn't checked whether the door to carriage twelve was locked before 'forcing' it open and feeling that immense power crash through her like a tidal wave—or like a drug, she forced herself to admit. Now Dace's reasons for lingering around carriage 12 were ripe for exposure, and the callous side of her was forced to reign.

Her voice wavered, and the ice of the Ringleader's eyes melted to water as Dace allowed herself to tear up; with her vision blurred he was little more than an abstract composition of red and black brushstrokes. She was aware of him opening his mouth, as if to say something comforting, but all that came out was a clinical: "Calm down."