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It was the middle of the night when Heather woke, panicked and disoriented. Something was wrong. Her room smelled of smoke and still-drying blood, and a familiar form was stretched out under the covers next to her.
Heather didn't—she didn't untense, exactly. Her mind raced, trying to remember just how close she'd left her taser, and her heart was beating so very fast.
But still, there were degrees of awful in the world; the enemy you knew was better than one you didn't. And Heather knew this enemy so very well.
She glared at the girl sharing her bed. “Alessa,” she said softly, “what do you want?”
Alessa smiled. Her dark eyes seemed almost to gleam in the shadowed room. “I wanted to see you,” she breathed. “I was curious...”
“Curious?” Heather had been trying so hard these past few months to keep quiet; she hated that her night terrors kept Douglas from sleeping. Now, though, when she wanted most to scream, her voice felt as though it had abandoned her. All she could seem to manage was a low whisper.
“I wanted to see how I was doing. To know if I was still pretending I could be something normal.” Burned and pitted skin stretched into a smile.
Don't panic, she thought to herself. She knew this was just another nightmare—it had to be, after all—and then wouldn't she feel bad when she woke Douglas up again?
Alessa laughed. “Just a nightmare? You should know better than anyone there's no such thing as just a nightmare.”
Heather shuddered. The memories poured over her, stronger than ever with her other self so close.
The sunless hospital, the bed smelling of illness and antiseptic. The pain that racked her body for years without end, leaving her feeling nothing but endless, hopeless agony. Her own disgusting body, more like a rotting corpse than anything human, oozing pus and blood and too useless to even stop working—
“Stop it!” Heather snapped.
“Stop what? You're the one in charge now—I can't make you think anything you don't want to.”
That may have been true—Heather didn't think she was capable of lying to herself that way—but Alessa was doing something. Heather could feel her influence squirming and sliding across the back of her mind, leaving a slug's trail of rot and misery.
It really pissed her off. Who did Alessa think she was that she could mess with Heather's mind and get away with it?
Heather snarled at Alessa. Alessa grinned wider in return, though whether it was because she was pleased at the reaction or because she could feel her other half's anger rising Heather wasn't sure. Either way, it only aggravated her further.
She wanted to wipe that smug festering smile right off Alessa's overconfident face, to prove that this sallow grinning shadow of herself wasn't the one in control.
She wanted to do something unexpected.
Well, she thought. If she was dreaming, then why not? There were no consequences here. There was nothing to regret in the morning, save that she dreamed at all.
Heather surged forward, pushing back the covers as she moved towards her double. Alessa flinched back—hands braced for an attack, for a battle she'd already lost before—but Heather didn't try to hit her. Instead, she pressed Alessa against the pillows and leaned in to kiss her.
She'd expected something vile. The feel of cold, rotting flesh, maybe, with maggots crawling out from those lips to greet her. In truth, Alessa was warm and tasted of smoke, salt, and the harsh metallic flavor that Heather recognized as blood. It wasn't a particularly good sensation, not by anyone's standards, but she was expecting so much worse that it came as a relief anyway.
Satisfyingly enough, Alessa seemed completely shocked. Her hands hovered uncertainly near Heather's shoulders; for a moment, Heather was certain she was going to hit her, but instead she latched onto the front of Heather's shirt and pulled her even closer. It was all the encouragement Heather needed.
It wasn't like she was completely inexperienced, but there was a difference between what she'd done before and, well, this. For one, she'd never been kissing herself—it was an entirely new feeling to see her own face, warped and damaged, staring back at her.
Heather ran a hand down Alessa's side, feeling the strange feverish heat that radiated from her body. She wore a copy of Heather own clothes, a long shirt and a pair of cotton shorts, but—just like on the carousel—they were ragged and dirty and smeared with blood. As her hand reached the end of her shirt, she let it slip underneath and press against the bare flesh of Alessa's stomach.
Alessa gasped and moaned, arching against Heather like she's hadn't been touched in years. Which, Heather realized, was most likely the truth.
The unevenness of her melted skin made for a strange texture. In places it felt almost glassy-smooth and in others it was rough and riddled with pockmarks. Flakes of blood came away in her hands as she touched Alessa, coating the pads of her fingers and getting caught under her nails.
Heather let her hand drift higher and higher, running fingers over the stretched-taught skin of Alessa's stomach and the jutting angles of her ribs. She was much, much thinner than Heather ever remembered being, and for a moment she felt a muted pang of pity. It must've been difficult to be caught like this: between life and death, little more than a leftover nightmare in another woman's life.
Heather couldn't be sure whether Alessa knew her thoughts somehow or if she was simply reacting to the stimulus, but once her hand started to brush the bottom of her other self's breast Alessa snarled gutturally and grabbed her wrist through the fabric.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
It was, Heather thought, meant to sound threatening. But she was still gasping for breath and her eyes were dark and wide; if anything, she sounded shocked. Maybe even frightened.
Heather smiled. “You just said I was in charge, didn't you? I like you better when you're not talking.” She shrugged, hoping it would cover the way her hands shook.
She hadn't forgotten just how vicious Alessa could be; she remembered the carousel and the way they fought. She still had scars from where the katana had bitten into her and bullets had grazed her skin. Even in her own dream her control was tenuous—the only hope she had was to guide the conversation and keep it from becoming a fight.
Alessa stared at her for a moment, then her expression broke into a jagged grin. Her teeth looked impossibly white against the background of her bruised and bleeding mouth, and each of them was very, very sharp. “Well, you might be the one who owns the body. But if you were truly in control of this dream, then I wouldn't be here in the first place, would I?”
With a sudden gesture, she pulled Heather's hand away, tearing her own shirt to ribbons in the process. In the dark, her blackened and charred body was nearly impossible to make out; she seemed to disappear almost entirely wherever her pajamas didn't cover. Alessa held Heather's hand close to her face, examining it with predatory eyes. “So smooth...”
“Amazing what not being burnt alive will do for you.”
Alessa snorts. “It's a little boring, didn't you think? Everything in your world is so perfect.”
Heather wouldn't call waking up three times a night every single night perfect. She wouldn't call being gossiped about at school because she broke a kid's nose after he tried to sneak up on her perfect. She wouldn't call jumping at every shadow, being forced to learn all the things her father used to do for her that Douglas didn't know anything about, or spending her nights desperately reading through old records for anything tying back to the cult perfect.
Ever since that day at the mall, her life had been held together by duct tape and sheer force of will—these days, perfect felt about as attainable as Heaven. But she wasn't about to show weakness in front of her other self. She'd fought hard for this life, for her right to live it, and she was proud of what she had.
She sneered at Alessa, resisting the urge to tear her hand away. “Jealous?”
“Jealousy doesn't become a woman of the faith.” Alessa's voice turned slow, drawling. “Don't you remember Mother telling you that?”
Heather was ready to say exactly where Mother could stick it, but her comment turned into a yelp as Alessa leaned in and bit the palm of her hand.
Her teeth were sharp, sharp, sharp, more like a shark's than a human being's, and Heather could feel the moment when they pierced through the skin. Alessa smiled around her mouthful, and very deliberately pressed her tongue against the puncture wounds. She licked a warm stripe across Heather's hand, soothing the burn with a rough, rasping tongue.
Heather bit her lip and tried not to moan. It was wrong to be enticed this way. It was wrong to give in to this. But heat was pooling in her belly, her pulse was rushing, and all she could think about was how good everything felt.
God, she wanted this.
Blood welled up on her palm when Alessa pulled back, ten little bright red dots in the darkness of the room. She followed it up with another, gentler kiss—to her forearm, then the crease of her elbow, then the spot where her shoulder met her body. Each one was soft, but with the promise of violence behind it; Heather could feel the power in Alessa's tense form and in the way she let go just before the skin would break.
They were so close together now. Alessa's scarred breasts pressed against her own, one of her legs had slipped between Heather's knees, and Heather could feel Alessa's hot breath on her neck. Carefully, with shaking hands, she pulled Alessa's face up to meet her and kissed her again.
It was different this time—less angry, less violent—but the heat between them was even more intense. Alessa made a noise somewhere between a moan and a growl when Heather bit at her lip. A moment later she ran her hands though Heather's hair, grabbing at it almost tightly enough to pull it out, and dragged Heather in even closer.
It was too much. Heather could barely react to what was happening; all she could think about was getting closer, going faster, feeling more of Alessa's skin under her hands. Her face and hands were slick with blood, from her own cuts and from Alessa's body; it felt filthy and intoxicating all at once. She fumbled her way to the front of Alessa's shorts, leaving a red smear against them where her palm slid across, and pressed.
“Can you-?” she asked. She didn't quite know how to say what she wanted, but Alessa seemed to understand well enough.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” she muttered. Her voice had gone low and rough, and hands shook as she pulled off her pants. Underneath was the same strange tone and texture. There wasn't any hair down where her legs intersected, just more of the melted and pitted skin.
Heather ran her fingers curiously across her skin, brushing against the opening there. “How much can you feel?”
“Ah!” Alessa jerked forward, sucking in a sudden breath. “E-enough.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Heather smirked at her counterpart, enjoying the ash-dark blush spreading across her cheeks. It was a good feeling, to be the one taking charge. A sudden image flashed through her mind—Alessa, spread out beneath her, making those choked-off noises as she squirmed on the bed. It was a fantastic thought, enough to flood her veins with courage.
Enough to make her put a hand on each of Alessa's thighs and, smiling, lean in closer. “So, then, if I just...”
“Heather,” Alessa moaned, more a gasp than a proper word. “Heather-”
Heather didn't let her finish. She pressed her mouth against the mound of flesh, let Alessa's body fill her senses, opened her mouth and licked into her.
The sound Alessa made was truly inhuman. Her thighs fell open and her hips bucked forward as she whined.
For a moment it was almost too much. Heather couldn't think around the feeling of Alessa pressing up against her, couldn't focus on anything but the taste of ash and blood and salt and sex. She slid her hands in further, to the warm skin where her legs connected to her body, and pressed Alessa back into the bed.
“Shh,” Heather muttered into Alessa's skin. She wanted to tell Alessa something more, but talking would mean stopping and she wasn't willing to do that yet.
(And anyway, she wasn't quite sure what she'd say—would she gloat, maybe, or offer Alessa a word of comfort? This other self of hers was way too confusing—pity and hate and something new, something deeper, were all warring for space in her heart.)
Instead, she did her best to say what she could with her body; she sucked at the spot where she assumed Alessa's clit must be (though it was too scarred to truly tell), lapped at her outer lips, and pulled back to press rough kisses into the creases of her inner thighs.
All the while, Alessa couldn't keep still—she didn't seem to have any idea what to do with her hands. One moment they were running through Heather's hair, pulling at her scalp or sliding gently through, and the next she was stuffing her knuckles into her mouth to try and muffle her cries.
Heather was wetter than she thought possible—every noise Alessa made sent a pang of arousal sparking through her, every shift or twitch in Alessa's body echoed through her own. The taste and the constant feedback from a body so similar to and yet so different from her own was beyond anything she could have imagined.
Oh God, Heather thought. She was going to develop some sort of weird fetish from this, wasn't she? She'd never be able to have normal sex.
With a sudden shake, Alessa's body tightened around Heather. A sharp, quiet noise ripped its way from her mouth as she came. Her face looked impossibly hot and her dark eyes had gone wide and unfocused.
With a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment, Heather pulled her head away. She paused for a moment, hovering at the edge of the bed; Alessa's mood was a constantly-shifting thing, and she couldn't read the expression on her face.
“Are you still seriously wearing everything?” Alessa said, a little grumpily. “Damn, you are ridiculous. Come here.”
A little warily, Heather crawled up beside her.
One of Alessa's arms reached around Heather's shoulders, pushing her back against the bedcovers. Alessa rolled on top of her and slipped her other hand beneath the waistband of Heather's pajamas.
Heather bit down on her lip, tried to muffle the sound, but it choked its way from her throat nonetheless. Two of Alessa's fingers slid right inside her without the slightest resistance, and her body shuddered as it tried to make sense of the sudden intrusion.
Alessa grinned smugly. “Wow, how wet are you?”
“Don't you think you sound a little ungrateful?” Heather tried not to blush. The feeling between her legs was—strange, stretched and open. There was a prickling under her skin that could so easily become something more.
“I'm just saying, if I'd known you were enjoying yourself that much I would have let you go a while longer.”
Heather took a breath to respond—Like you could have lasted much longer yourself—but Alessa moved her fingers just as she did and all thought of arguing slipped from her head.
First Alessa slid her fingers in deeper, so far inside her the burn was almost painful. She let Heather savor the feeling of being touched so intimately for a few seconds, then slid back out to rub at her clit. There was no rhythm, no sense to her movements—one second she'd be almost impossibly gentle, and the next she was pinching Heather's clit until the ache was unbearable or scratching at her from the inside with blunted nails.
Heather's body hardly felt like hers anymore; she couldn't control the sounds her mouth was making, couldn't stop from thrashing and squirming and whining in a broken voice, asking for more, deeper, faster, more.
Alessa bit roughly at Heather's neck, sucking dark bruises into the soft skin there, then turned her attention further down. She sucked and licked at Heather's breasts through the thin fabric of her top, mouthing at the cloth there until Heather's nipples were puckered and sore. Her bites weren't enough to break the skin, but Heather could tell she was going to have bruises there.
In between kisses, Alessa muttered a constant string of nonsense to her, guttural fragments of words mixed in with growls and gasps. One moment she'd be praising Heather—her body, the noises she made, the way she moved—and the next she would snarl something harsh and possessive into her ear.
After what couldn't have been more than a minute, Heather felt herself start to tense. She tried to hold back—just a little more, a little further—but her body was more electrified and sensitive than she could take.
She gasped as she came, biting back the noises she wanted to make.
For a few moments after Alessa kept working at her body, sliding into and rubbing against sore and oversensitive skin. It wasn't until Heather started to squirm, breath coming out harsh from discomfort, that she slowed her movements.
Finally, Alessa slid her fingers out completely and rolled over to lay at Heather's side. The loss was bizarrely uncomfortable—her body kept trying to tense against something that wasn't there anymore.
“So,” Alessa said, grinning cruelly. “You still think you're normal?”
Heather groaned. “If you even try to pretend this was some master plan of yours, I'm going to punch you in the face.”
It was strange. Twenty minutes ago she would have been rearing for a fight, ready to wipe that obnoxious smile off her other half's face. Hell, that was the whole reason she'd started this in the first place. But right now she was just... tired, in a strangely pleasant sort of way. The last thing she wanted to do was get all pissed off again.
She wasn't quite sure whether the feeling meant that Alessa had stopped trying to mess with her head or if it was just a normal side effect of having sex.
“Easy for you to say. You're such an idiot, you know that?” Alessa scowled.
“What the hell do you wantthem—you wouldn't get anything out of me dying.” Technically, the none of The Order would get anything out of her death these days; she wasn't the Mother of God anymore. But they also weren't the forgiving sort. Revenge would be enough motivation for any of them. “And I know neither of us believe in the god they're trying to sell. So why do you keep trying to kill me or drive me crazy or whatever you're going for?”
She'd hoped that when they'd battled it out on the carousel—when she'd cut her other self down and reabsorbed the memories of her past life—it would calm the anger in what was left of Alessa. Obviously, she'd been wrong.
Alessa grimaced, face contorting into a snarl. “You really are stupid. You have all the info and you still don't have a clue.” To her surprise, Heather could see something dark and thick, almost like tears, gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I'm trying to help you.”
“Help me? You tried to murder me!”
“Yes! didn't you understand? You're not safe. So long as you're alive, you'll never be safe. The Order didn't forget; they'll find you and they'll take you and when they're finally done with you there won't be anything left of the person you are now.” Alessa's breath was coming quick, panicked. Her fingers kept tracing the patterns of burn marks on her forearms—Heather suspected she didn't realize she was doing it. “Dying now, before they get to you, is your only chance. If you wait until you want to die, you won't be able to.”
Heather blinked, frozen, unsure how to respond. She'd expected Alessa's reasoning to be anger or twisted jealously: if I can't live a normal life, then neither can you. Something vile and simple-minded, easy to strike back against. Not... this.
All this time, Alessa had been trying to protect her.
“Stop making that face,” Alessa snapped. “I don't need your pity.”
Heather snapped her mouth shut and tried to school her expression into something more neutral. “I didn't realize.”
Alessa smiled again, but this time it was different. Fragile. “If you want, I can do it right now.” Her hands circled Heather's throat. “I'll be really gentle—I promise you won't feel a thing.”
“Stop,” Heather said firmly. “I get what you're saying, I really do.” Those secondhand memories (the ritual, the fire, her desperate desire to die already) were as much a part of her mind as the ones of her own childhood. “But... I don't agree. Dad took down Dahlia, all those years ago. He saved us.”
“And then he died for it.”
“Yeah, he did. But he had seventeen years, first. I didn't think he would have chosen to give them up.” The words spilling from her mouth were clumsy; they sounded stupid even to her own ears. She'd never been good at heart-to-hearts. She continued on anyway. If she didn't say this now, it was all over.
It was nothing more than a feeling, but she believed in it absolutely: she could win Alessa over now or forever be her enemy.
“I killed God last year. Douglas and I have been working against the cult for months. We're still alive, and we're still fighting them.”
“For how much longer?”
“I don't know.” They'd had close calls already, more than Heather cared to count. “But I want to find out. I want to try. Even if it hurts me, I still want to do this.”
Alessa rolled her eyes, looking completely exasperated. But she didn't scream. She didn't argue. “You'll regret it. I know you will.”
“Yeah, probably.”
With a sigh, Alessa flopped back down next to Heather, burying her face in her neck. “I guess we're both idiots, huh?”
Heather rested her head against the back of Alessa's. “I suppose it runs in the family.”
After that, neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. Through slowly closing eyes, Heather watched the way Alessa's hair shifted with each breath she took.
When she fell asleep, it was with Alessa at her side.
---
Heather woke up sore. For one shining moment, she stretched out, expecting the feeling of a warm body next to hers—
And then froze as the details of her dream flooded back in.
“Oh God,” she groaned. She was beyond mortified; she couldn't even think straight for the sudden rush of embarrassment overwhelming her brain.
Of all the things she could have dreamed about—
Of all the people she could have dreamed about—
It was official. Her brain hated her. Loathed her, really, with a passion she didn't realize she could inspire.
Heather pressed her hands against her cheeks to fight the blush, rubbed at sleep-encrusted eyes, and then froze once more.
A strange, tacky red substance was smeared across her hands. And—she looked down—across her pajamas, her stomach, and her legs.
It's not possible.
Really, the whole bed was covered. The sheets were stained with dark smudges of the substance.
Hesitantly, nervously, she pulled down the top of her pajama shirt. Overlapping rings of dark blue-and-purple bruises mottled her breasts. Around them, she could see the faint imprint of teeth marks.
“Fuck,” Heather said quietly. She tore the sheets from her bed and wrapped them into a bundle. Maybe she could wash them in the shower? How cold did the water in there get?
One thought echoed through her brain on a desperate, endlessly-repeating loop: Douglas can never know.