Chapter 22Ice-Cold Love28 February 2022“Alice?” Amy’s voice echoed through the basement. “Are you there?”

  Yes, she is. She’s been here for the past however many hours. She’s slept once or twice, paced a bit, and generally did everything she could except leave the cell. It might be a shabby hiding pce, but it’s one others seem content to not disturb her in too much. It’s certainly much better than the constant interactions forced upon her upstairs.

  “There you are.” Amy stops in front of her, frowning. She’s making herself small by pulling her shoulders together and trembles slightly, the usual confidence and grace with which she carries herself shattered. The discomfort only seems to encourage her to immediately take Ace’s hands. “Right. Up you go. We’re leaving this dump behind and will hang out somewhere nice. Because this really won’t do.”

  “It’s not so bad.” Alice protests despite being almost effortlessly pulled to her feet. Amy is a lot stronger than she looks.

  She looks around for a second, her eyes lingering on specific dents in the wall for a reason Alice can’t quite comprehend. “No, it’s miserable. It’s a dark, cold torture chamber. The girls use it for, like, the odd whipping. Maybe Jenny will pretend she’s been a really bad girl again and stay overnight. It’s not made to be used the way you want to use it, which is spending the next however many days hiding from the world.”

  “Who cares if it’s not supposed to be used like that. At least I can choose to go here. There’s not many other pces I can escape to.”

  “I understand.” Amy sounds somewhat empathetic. “But I don’t like being here. It’s a pce filled with so many memories, associations and traumatic experiences that even going to the wine celr is uncomfortable for me. And I really need to talk to you right now. Because I’m worried, okay? You’re making things so much harder for yourself.”

  Of course she’s worried. People are always worried when Ace tries to make sure she doesn’t get sympathy she doesn’t deserve. They make it worse by forcing it on her regardless. All that happens is that they get hurt and Ace is left more guilty than before.

  So she tries to derail the conversation. “It can’t be that traumatic if it’s used for masochism and things. You enjoy that stuff. You like much worse things than whips and such.”

  Ace tries to avoid thinking about the time she visited Amy’s bedroom and found her instaltion of Scrivener open to one of the stories she’d been writing. Where Ace might be retively vanil within the broader BDSM scene, Amy is very much not. The story she quickly looked through was about a woman kidnapped and sold into svery. In the scene, she was being forced to perform oral sex with a gun to the back of her head after having been told one of her fellow victims had been ‘put down’ for not being ‘profitable enough’.

  Surprisingly, a lot of it included men. But where the scenes with women involved some genuine excitement, the ones with men were purely transactionary. There were some references to the main character being ‘trained’ to love men, but that didn’t surprise her. Amy’s always been into that psychological shit. Really, there are no depths she wouldn’t steep to. Except feet, she once cimed, pcing it in a rather unappealing lineup of concepts like ‘serious’ agepy, ‘actual’ gore, amputation ‘other than balls, of course’ and ‘visible’ death.

  It was really hard to cuddle up to Amy that night and equally hard to sleep without her protective embrace.

  Her distraction didn’t work, though.

  “Alice, please just listen to me.” Amy’s voice lowered to a near-whisper. “I want to help you. I can’t do that down here, it’s— It’s too much. Just being here makes me feel like I’m backsliding again.”

  “Backsliding?”

  “I— I told you st week. I was a nasty little prick who needed to be ripped out of a world in which she could do nothing but harm. Whether I liked it or not. Eira and Loonie made sure I would. So I woke up in this cell, I starved myself here, I cried my heart out, I lost my will to fight, I begged and pleaded for forgiveness. Not that I deserved it. But I had to get it from them if I wanted— if I wanted to stay. And I did want to stay. And they did give it to me, and maybe I deserved that second chance more than I did actual forgiveness. I try to deserve it now, at least. Maybe I’m getting somewhere.” Her words come out in bursts, her eyes filled with tears. She’s never seen Amy like this before.

  “They did all that to you just for posting on 4chan?” Ace couldn’t believe it. If she couldn’t forgive Kelynen before, knowing she was capable of such things…

  “If I had just spent too much time on that stupid website I wouldn’t be this worked up about it.” She tried to blink her tears away. “But I’m not. I lied, Alice. Or, well, I hid the truth. Which is just as bad. I didn’t want you to know who I used to be because I try to be someone entirely different each and every waking moment of my life. And I still can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to, but because it’s hard. Especially here. I— I was willing to accept the unacceptable, okay? Because I’m selfish. I had everything I could ever need to improve the world, and, um…”

  “You’re lying to me too?” Ace sounds as disappointed as she is. “I know everyone is, but… I thought we were friends?”

  “We’ve been trying to keep information from you, yes. And I’m sorry. It’s— it’s how we do things. It took us a few weeks to get comfortable telling Gwen too. But it’s things you didn’t want to know, and didn’t need to know either. That would only have hurt you. And it’s been killing Loonie so to keep secrets. She’s always been bad at them.” Amy stares at the floor, depressed. “Unlike me. I— I still do it too often. Keeping secrets, that is.”

  “I’d have loved to know! So I would know to stay away from this entire pce. From the people here who think it’s okay to do horrific things to people just because they went through them themselves. From the people excusing such crimes.” Why isn’t Amy taking her side? She promised she would always be there for her. Instead, she’s been lying to her and stabbing her in the back.

  “And that’s why we didn’t tell you. You’ll take any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to make sure you don’t get the care you need. I know you’re hurting. Everyone who ends up here is. But sometimes— sometimes we can’t listen to the stupid voices telling us not. Or as Eira taught me, sometimes you need to do it to someone even when they protest. Because they can’t make rational decisions about how much love they need, or whether they should transition, or how they should treat others in their lives. They have to be guided into becoming the most vibrant, beautiful women they could be, even when all the tools are at their disposal.”

  Amy sounds like she’s been brainwashed. Or maybe she’s so traumatised that she doesn’t know right from wrong anymore. Not that she has much of a choice, given she is a prisoner. But the fact that she’s letting herself be used to hurt Ace…

  “I don’t want those tools. Not if it means being the woman they want me to be.”

  “Not even being the woman I want you to be?”

  “You’re— you’re with them. The people who kidnapped you! You’re so stockholmed you pretend you love them. You ignore their crimes, at least.” If she’s not going to be on Ace’s side, the least she could do is go away. “Is there anything you couldn’t overlook if it was to your own benefit?”

  “Alice. Don’t.” Amy looks around her like a cornered and terrified animal, looking down the corridor towards the stairs, tempted to flee.

  “They do kidnapping and forced feminisation. Clearly you’re fine with that. How about rape? Murder? Like in your fantasies? Would you overlook that for some stupid pills?”

  “Please stop.” She pleads. “I—”

  “Tell me. Where’s the line? Should I learn how to be a good girl from someone who had a man killed, just because you like her? I thought you’d be better than this.”

  “That’s quite enough of that, Alice.” Eira says firmly from down the hallway, out of Alice’s view. “You do not talk to my girls like that.”

  “I—” Ace tries to say something but is ruthlessly interrupted.

  “It would do you very well to know when you should be silent. Now is one of those times.” Eira sneers, her anger barely concealed. She then takes a look at Amy, pauses, and beckons her over to her.

  Amy approaches Eira cautiously. She’s trembling. Her eyes are filled with tears and the little makeup she’d been wearing had run down her cheeks. Ace could hear her breathing had become uneven and irregur. It seemed like she was having a panic attack, and Ace knows exactly whose fault it was.

  Eira takes Amy into her arms, pulling her close. “It’s okay.” She whispers. “No matter what she says, it doesn’t make it true. You’re not like that.”

  Amy says something so softly and muffled Ace can’t quite hear her, but it seemed like it was ‘but what if I am?’

  “You’re not. We made sure you’re not. That’s why it hurts so much.”

  “I’m sorry.” She mumbles. “I—”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. We’ve already forgiven you for anything you could be sorry for. Those mistakes, made years ago, do not reflect on who you are today. You’re a wonderful young woman. You don’t deserve to be insulted like that.”

  “I understand, ma’am.” Amy whispers. Somehow, it feels like entire sentences had been left implied. She wishes she could be that close to someone, someday.

  “And you don’t agree.” Eira concludes. “That’s okay. Go find Faith and have her make you something nice to eat or drink, I’ll join you in about fifteen minutes.”

  Amy hesitates for a moment, but then nods and heads upstairs, leaving Ace alone with a very pissed-off head sponsor. It’s not the best situation to be in. She’s always been distant and Ace doesn’t know what she’s actually capable of, but the little she’s seen of her makes her think that it’s a lot more than Ace could handle.

  The woman takes position right across from her, arms crossed and impatiently tapping her feet. “Tell me, Alice. What do you think you saw there?”

  “She was, um, crying.” She offers. “And you comforted her.”

  “And why was she crying?” Eira asks like it’s an interrogation.

  “Because I was confronting her with her own actions?”

  “What actions? Being brought here against her will? Spending years improving herself so she could bloom into the fun and caring woman she is today? Finding community with people who went through the same and can rete to her insecurities? Ending up convinced of the efficacy of this programme, of which she can see the fruits every single day?” Eira seems like she’s barely holding herself back from unleashing the kind of anger Ace hasn’t seen since she moved out. “Does any of that justify the way you’ve treated such a sweet girl?”

  “She lied to me about it!” Ace protests. “She said so.”

  “Your best friend said she tried to avoid hurting you, so you tried to hurt her as badly as you could.”

  “She’s not a particurly good one.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Amy tried to avoid hurting you and causing you to have a reaction akin to this, afraid that you might say something that would make her backslide. And now you have done exactly that. If she’s a ‘bad friend’, you’ve been a horrible one.”

  Ace stares at Eira, unsure how to respond to that. What did she even do to induce something like that? Clearly the woman wants a response, though, made obvious by the long silence, so she has to say something.“How am I supposed to know what backsliding is or what causes it?”

  “Perhaps you could have listened to her warnings that this pce is traumatic for her? Perhaps you could have taken into account that she was rambling and avoiding telling you about a past she’s still very sensitive about? Perhaps you could have been more generous to someone who is trying to be your best friend rather than constantly attempting to make her go away through cruelty?”

  “I don’t know? I’m sorry?”

  “You don’t know? What do you not know? Do you not know how to behave around vulnerable people? Because in that case your time here will be very lonely indeed.”

  “Is that a threat?” Ace knew Eira was angry, but she hadn’t expected an escation like this.

  “It’s not a threat— it’s a warning. I’m simply informing you of the natural conclusion of your behaviour, Alice. If you keep hurting people who are trying to be your friend and show that they care about you, you will end up without anyone to keep you company for the next five years, because you’ve successfully raised the cost of being in your vicinity so high that no amount of love will be able to overcome it. Is that what you want?”

  “No.” Ace looks away.

  “What do you want then?”

  “I just want to go home. I don’t like it here. Not anymore. Not knowing what I know now.”

  “Going home is not an option. You signed up for the whole five year programme. You waived your uniteral right to dissolve the contract when you did so. The only person who can terminate your involvement is me. And given the way you treated our girls, I’m not convinced you won’t try to do much worse things to them, like report them to the police.”

  “They murdered people! Why do people pretend like it’s such a minor thing—”

  “Because they did not murder people, Alice!” Eira snapped. “That is your assumption based on the idea of not being seen again. But I can tell you what I know ten years after my own introduction to Dorley Hall: they do not die. They are transferred to another location where they will be harmless to the broader world. Do you know what kinds of people end up washing out? Violent men. Rapists. People who tried to hospitalise gay members of their intake. People who tried to kill their sponsors. And yes, in some cases some cisgender individuals caught up in the system have ‘washed out’ as well. But they are not treated the same as the others. Kelynen had a washout, yes, but he was in that tter category.”

  “Kelynen said it was basically death.” Ace points out. She’s not going to be maniputed into thinking it’s okay. No matter how much Eira talks down to her in the ways she deserves.

  “And I’ve repeatedly told her that her former boy will be fine. He may not be free, but he will be safe and comfortable. She doesn’t believe me, and that is her right.” Eira calms down a little. “Do you know how guilty she feels about all this, Alice? Do you know how much she bmes herself for what happened? Do you know it was not her choice to make in the first pce, but a decision solely reserved to the custodian of the Hall? She tried to save that boy and turn him into a better person, then offer him a chance to go through life with a totally clean ste. It was the circumstances of that clean ste he suffered under. Aunt Bea made the decision that we can’t demand that he go through a life of dysphoria, and sent him to a pce where he could be happier.”

  “But—”

  “You owe it to her to give her the benefit of the doubt, Alice. Just like you owe it to Amy or to Gwen. You’ve hurt the three people closest to you so much with your recent tantrum. That’s all on you. And I will hold you responsible for the damage. Because none of them deserve the treatment they’ve gotten. And all this because you don’t want them to love you? All this because being cared for is uncomfortable? All this because you don’t think happiness is something conditional on perfect behaviour, for both yourself and others?

  “They all love you and care about you. That’s why they’re willing to deal with your spiky nature to slowly find their way to the lovely girl at the heart of it all. They know there’s a sweet, heart-working and gentle woman to be found when they do get you to open up.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. How can I be spiky but also gentle?” It has to be another manipution technique.

  “You’re spiky because you think you can’t live up to your own expectations and want to push people away before you inflict a lifetime of pain upon them. You’ve said as much yourself.”

  “I guess.” Ace rolls her eyes again.

  “But let me be very clear, Alice Howells. I do not accept you hurting my girls like that. Especially not the girls still in this programme. That includes Amy. So I’m going to be ying out some of my own rules for you. You’re going to try to graciously accept other people’s friendship. If you have an issue with anyone’s behaviour, do not sh out at them and take it directly to me. If you wish to be avoidant, tell them you wish to be left alone for a moment. If the matter is important you will agree to dey the conversation to a time and pce more comfortable for both parties.”

  “Um?” Why is she taking such an interest in ying out new rules for her all of a sudden?

  “They’re my rules because you’ve put your sponsor in a position where she will not be able to carry out her duties in the coming weeks. Because you still believe she is a murderer, and where Amy could have stood in, you’ve hurt her enough that she’s going to need to spend time recovering before taking on any sisterly duties. That means I will temporarily be taking over as your sponsor. If you wish that Kelynen returns to her duties, you will have to forgive her and apologise to her. The same applies to when you want to spend time with Amy again.”

  Ace might have slightly fucked up, if this is a sign of how Eira will treat her in the future. She can’t even talk to whoever she wants anymore?

  “Until then, I will make sure you make some serious progress in the goals of this programme.” She looks down at Ace and a grin forms on her face. “I expect you to be in the kitchen in an hour for cleaning duty. Someone baked a birthday cake and made the terrible mistake of letting Jenny decorate it…”