Chapter 14Just a little desperate.21 February 2022Someone softly ruffles her shoulder.

  Gwen opens her eyes. It’s Alice.

  “Hmm?” She closes her eyes again. Too sleepy.

  “Um. Can I, um.” She struggles with words. “Nightmare.”

  “Join me?” Gwen asks.

  “Y-Yes.”

  Gwen shifts to the other side of the bed and makes some room for Alice.

  “Sorry to be a burden.” Alice says.

  “You’re not.”

  “Is it okay if I, um. Cuddle?”

  “Please do~” Gwen allows Alice to put her arms around her, and quickly loses herself in her dreams again.

  22 February 2022Gwen really tries not to think too hard about it. It, of course, being the fact that Elle is quite prettied up today and preparing to leave the manor to go back to her day job, which is something with stocks and things as far as she knows. There’s the rumour, spread to her by Aoife, that she does something with military things too. Hence why Brenin Manor has a verified stockpile of genuine military weaponry kept far out of the hands of anyone but the sponsors. For defence, she insisted. It’s a bit of a weird conspiracy — who would care that much about a random noblewoman and her transgender maids enough to attack a random castle in Wales?

  It’s not the 17th century anymore. Perhaps Elle likes to pretend like it is, however. Besides, why anyone would trust Kelynen with a gun is beyond her: the woman is quite clumsy at the best of times.

  Gwen imagines some helpless bystander being nailed to a tree by Kelynen shooting a bullet 90 degrees to the side, somehow not understanding that a gun should be aimed before shooting.

  She giggles, catches the attention of Elle for a second, and vaguely gestures with her hand that she’s fine.

  The woman has been giving her a lot of attention recently. She has demanded the attention with her behaviour — a little too explicit, Fey said — and it’s definitely made an impression on her. Not a good one, she thinks, given Elle has been trying to ignore her behaviour.

  Gwen heard her saying something along the lines of feeling ‘rather old’ recently. She feels quite lonely, according to Vivi, because the woman she used to see recently found her long-lost love. They still interact regurly, but not as intimately, and Elle is frustrated with it. Hence why a programme she’d set up earlier as a bit of an experiment was continued and intensified with another group of girls, following demands by the sponsors and participant girls.

  Gwen isn’t quite sure why she wishes Elle specifically would do things with her. Perhaps it’s the power differential between the two, giving it some kind of taboo status, or the idea that a powerful cis woman is in some way interested in her.

  Except she wants Elle to hurt her and be very much disinterested in her suffering. To hold her power over Gwen and use it to snuff someone as horrible as her out with impunity. Sadly, she doesn’t seem like the person to do something like that.

  It really is a shame: Gwen deserves much worse, not the retive comfort and even luxury she’s been offered. Sure, Alice seems to hate it here, and Aoife is at best neutral. But she can’t help but like the big, comfortable bed and consistent meals and people she actually likes rather than her family, or god forbid—

  Fey snaps her fingers in front of Gwen.

  “Hey.” Fey says. “Welcome back.”

  Gwen looks around the room, notices that everyone has left, blushes and feels more than a little stupid. Stuck in her stupid, horny thoughts again. Typical.

  “Missed you.” Gwen says, lost for other words but feeling like guilting Fey into caring for her.

  Rather than seeing straight through her petty manipution — they had definitely talked less than fifteen minutes ago — Fey embraces Gwen from behind, pulls her close, and rests her chin on Gwen’s shoulder. “I’m happy you did.”

  “What if it was a lie?” Gwen whispers.

  “What is a lie?” Fey asks, confused.

  “That I missed you.”

  “I don’t think it was a lie.” Fey says, sitting down on a couch and making sure Gwen remains next to her, Gwen’s legs pced across her p so she can keep her close and look at her more easily. It’s a position she’s often manoeuvred Gwen into.

  “It was. I just wanted a hug.” Gwen bites her lip. Somehow, admitting her shitty attempts at manipution feels good: maybe Fey will hate her now.

  “Is wanting a hug from me not a form of missing me?” Fey asks. “You clearly missed my physical presence.”

  “That’s different.” Gwen away from Fey, who is being way too kind to her like always. “You know, I’m a chronic liar—”

  “Thinking it doesn’t make it true.” Fey holds Gwen’s hands.

  “He was right, though. I am maniputive, I do try to make people like me through lies, by being overly horny and making them feel—”

  Fey envelops her hands, holding them closely, letting them warm in the safety of her protection. Gives Gwen a chance to breathe, to think, and to consider her ‘logic’, or ck of it.

  Gwen really doesn’t deserve any of the people in her life. They’re all much too nice to her.

  “You know why he said it.” Fey’s fingers interce with Gwen’s, constant movement to remind her that yes, she is loved.

  “He wanted me to feel guilty.”

  “He wanted you to be scared of yourself, of the world around you, and to trust him as telling you the harsh truth.” Fey repeats. “So he could control you.”

  “So he could hurt me.” Gwen adds from her memory. “So he could abuse me.”

  “Exactly.” Fey says. “You don’t have to be ashamed of still thinking that way.”

  “I should. It was over half a decade ago. I could have been over it long ago if I’d talked to a therapist.”

  “You said you were scared they would think you’re insane and making it all up.” Fey adds. Gwen is happy they’ve had the conversation before: it makes things easier. She doesn’t have to articute vague negative feelings anymore.

  “Because I’m a liar and they would see right through me.”

  “Do you think I’m gullible?” Fey asks, knowing the answer in advance.

  “No.”

  “All I see is a hurt girl who hates herself way too much and ran away from the world as a result. Who is here to heal, to find things to love about herself.”

  “I know.” Gwen tries to avoid feeling too annoyed at herself or more dangerously, crying. She wants her to feel safe, and she does, but safety feels both foreign and terrifying at times.

  “How much have you been thinking of yourself as being like that?” Fey asks.

  “All the time. With everything I do.” She hates admitting it. It feels like she’s failing and cannot ever do better than she has. That Fey and Vivi are being so incredibly patient with her and she continues to fail them, time and time again.

  She’s hurting them so much by being as useless as she is.

  “I need to stop hurting people.” Gwen whispers.

  “How many people have you actually hurt?”

  “I don’t know. A lot, probably. Hundreds.”

  “Try that again.”

  Gwen hates it when they don’t believe her on this. The harm feels so real, so omnipresent.

  Luckily, she has one example that they cannot deny.

  “I hurt Alice a lot.”

  “Did you intend to hurt Alice?” Fey asks.

  “No!” Gwen says, defensively. “Not in that case. I just wanted to, I don’t know, be fun? But all I did was hurt her. It’s all I ever do.”

  “Was that what set you off back into thinking this way about yourself?” Fey whispers. Gwen, lost for words, simply nods and allows herself to be pulled into an embrace, Fey softly caressing her hair like she’s a puppy and whispering a few supportive words.

  “I hurt her again this week.” Gwen says, sobbing.

  “What did you do?”

  “I— I did things to her. Sexual things. She wouldn’t have wanted them, she wouldn’t have wanted me, but I did them because I wanted to and because I always act like this. A stupid fucking girl—”

  “How do you know she didn’t want those things?”

  Gwen isn’t sure how to answer the question. “She just didn’t.”

  “You don’t think Alice, of all people, wouldn’t have made it very clear she didn’t want it?”

  “I don’t know.” She thinks about it. “Maybe not. I should have asked and not just assumed and I’m, fuck—”

  Fey shushes her. “Isn’t that for her to decide?”

  “Maybe.” Gwen says. “I should have known better regardless.”

  “You told me she’s the one who initiated doing more than the kiss.” Fey points out.

  “I tricked her—”

  Fey shushes her again. “I’ll make sure someone asks Alice, okay? Low key. So you don’t have to feel so afraid you hurt her. And you remember what I said about being afraid about hurting people, right?”

  If she were really maniputive and abusive, Gwen remembers Fey saying a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t be so afraid she hurts people. It still feels hard to believe.

  “You’re fine, darling.” Fey whispers. “You’re better than people made you believe you are.”

  “I know.” Gwen says. She really does know: she feels stupid for even believing the things she does, believing him, believing the people who wanted to keep her too hurt to think rationally. She’s really been trying to think rationally recently, but logic is its own trap, something that ensnares her and shatters her. Like Vivi said.

  Vivi told her that some people end up being like a vase, standing in grandmother’s old cottage down the road from a nasty old vilge in rural Lincolnshire. When she accidentally dropped it on the floor as a little boy, her parents wanted the ‘crummy old bits’ disposed of and thrown away, but she insisted that she repair it, piece by piece, because it was grandma’s.

  ‘Repairing something, or someone, is an act of love.’ She said. ‘You have to find all the pieces, or as many as you can, then puzzle everything back together, do some horrid handiwork especially if you’re a bloody dumb kid like me, do everything little by little and give it the time it deserves. In the end, you make something more beautiful than you had before, a mosaic of skill and survival that one can admire for many more years. Even if it made a shoddy vase’. Her parents thought her insane, and ‘maybe she was, a tad’.

  It’s a bit of a rubbish metaphor, Vivi said. And she said she 'sounds like she's channeling her bloody grandma saying things like this'. But Gwen still likes it, if only because the feeling of being broken and having bits of yourself dislodged and perhaps gone, never to be seen again, feels incredibly familiar. Like the innocence she lost long ago, and never really got to rediscover.

  She's been trying, though.