Passing The Baton

[Grand Moff Hissa]

((Crystal Henderson continued from I Hail From Nowhere))

The wind blew swirls of snowflakes through the air as Crystal trudged along the path. Her head was low, her gaze locked on the ground in front of her. Each step was slow, measured. The gun in her hands felt chilly, and carrying it felt awkward now. The air caught in her throat.

She didn't know where she was going. Somewhere else. The town again, maybe. She was drifting like the snow, but hadn't that brought her this far? Whatever story the lines on her hand no longer told, her path had been set. All that was left was to walk it.

But whatever the end, pace and caution mattered. A slip here could send her stumbling, while a steady stride could see her safely to the other side. It was a lesson she should have learned earlier, one that would have saved her pain and peril.

Up ahead a ways on the slope, a boulder overlooked the path, and next to it sat a patch of scrubby vegetation. It looked different from this side. Crystal let her gaze linger for a moment, but then forced it away.

She couldn't dawdle. It would be important to get to cover before nightfall.

[PlatFleece]

((Jennifer Farrow continued from The World Ended on a Snowy Day))

She had been nursing her arm for halfway along her trip, then decided to just use the first aid kit now. If she didn't, she'd risk an infection. Bleeding like this was going to attract attention, or worse, predators... and not just the animal kind, either.

Crouching down next to a set of shrubbery by a treeline to tend to her wounds, it wasn't long before Jennifer heard some silent footsteps in the distance.

Shit.

She realized that she had kept her backpack and spear a little further away, tucked behind a tree. Right now, she needed to focus and stay silent. She had to wait carefully to see who was coming. Friend, or foe? She had been expecting to ready herself based on if the individual was weak or strong, armed or unarmed, a familiar face or a stranger, but she wasn't prepared to meet a face she had associated with two of her most traumatic incidents on the island. And she didn't expect to see her again so soon.

Crystal.

For a moment, Jenny thought she was staring right at her... Jenny stood still, holding her breath, waiting until Crystal would move past her.

But was she going to waste this chance? She was getting away. If she doesn't do this now, what will it all be for?

Despite the silence, Jenny's heart was pounding. She had to make a choice.

The moment Crystal had her back to her, she jumped towards the girl, utilizing all the bulk and muscle she had built up in basketball team to tackle her. Jenny didn't really have a plan for what happens next.

She was just angry.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Crystal walked past her former hiding place, pushing from her mind the memories, the figments of imagination. She tried to focus not on the echoes of the past, not on imagined fears, but on the very real challenge of putting one foot in front of the other. She moved step by step. Gaze low. Her shoes were dirty, but at least not soaked through.

She was watching her toes when the impact hit.

In hindsight, there were signs. That soft padding of footsteps wasn't echoes. Too fast, too out of time. The way Crystal's gaze had been drawn to the hiding spot. Recollection, or subconscious awareness? Had something moved? Something was wrong, but her experience blinded her to it. The faint shift in energy. Her body stiffened, readied herself, even though she didn't know why. But she was still caught off guard by the impact.

No time to think. No time to overthink, either, so Crystal didn't freeze for once. She twisted as she fell, and she was lucky because she twisted so that her injured side was more cushioned. The gun was in front of her, no way to bring it to bear, but it didn't go off and shoot her. She turned her head, trying to see what was happening, who was there.

Of course.

She'd been careless.

[PlatFleece]

The slam didn't hurt, even though it should. Her body wasn't letting her feel the pain. If she were truly thinking about it, it was probably some after-effect of the adrenaline, the way her chest wouldn't hurt until after she had made a successful play at the end of the fourth quarter, barreling across the court. Fully focused, nothing on her mind but her goal.

And to Jenny, that was revenge.

A tumble on the ground, where they both scrapped, trying to get a leg-up on each other, both figuratively and literally, but Jenny's bulk was enough to pin down Crystal. The first thing Jenny thought was to kick Crystal's gun away from her hand. Now it was tucked safely at the edge of the road.

Jenny reached for her spear, but found that it too had gone missing. She had forgotten that it was all back at that tree. How was she going to get vengeance now? Choke her to death? Punch her until she couldn't breathe?

Donovan told her to win, and she didn't want to disappoint him.

But Jenny trembled. Her hands wouldn't move. It froze up, stuck in a position of pinning down Crystal's body. Did she not have it in her to kill, after all this time? Or was she just a coward, unable to do what needs to be done to the people who are killers.

But she couldn't hold her like this forever. She had to find a way out.

The answer came almost immediately. Maybe Crystal saw it too, in the pause during the scuffle. A nearby cliffside. Jenny wouldn't be killing her if she just... pushed her off, would she? For a moment, Jenny was distracted with the potential, the potential that this might actually happen, that she'd have to do the deed.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Crystal wheezed. She did not cry. She did not beg, or bargain, or curse. Not yet. She squirmed and tried to wriggle her way from the stronger girl's grasp, and she was unsuccessful.

Stupid. Careless. This was neither whetstone nor cinderblock. This was slipping on a banana peel because she was too wrapped up looking at her phone.

This was how she was going to die.

Her breath was catching in her throat, choking her. The gun was off to the side. It had been plucked from her hands just like that. Just like that. So easy, to render her helpless and harmless.

It seemed that Jenny had been caught off guard just as much as Crystal had. It was relatable. Presumably in her head she'd been expecting some kind of fight, a desperate struggle to bring down the killer of her... whatever the boy Crystal had killed had been. Instead, she got this. Unsatisfying for all involved.

Crystal wasn't really putting her all into trying to break the grip. Why bother? She was weaker. She was caught out. She was doomed. The trajectory of the encounter was spread out before them. There were sharp stones digging into her back, and the snow was compressed under her, icy cold seeping into her whole body.

This was taking longer than she'd expected, really. Was Jenny that off-balance? Or, no—she'd come up blank, Crystal realized. She had no weapon, so she had no plan. It was hard to kill someone quickly with your bare hands. Crystal was disarmed, but the girl hadn't thought of what came next.

That was also relatable.

Jenny was glancing around, trying to find a rock, maybe, of suitable heft for crushing a skull. Crystal let her eyes close.

It wasn't enough time for a good plan. But it was enough time for something inside her to cry out, to tell her it wasn't quite over just yet. More was expected of her. Perhaps she might deliver.

"You," Crystal said, and then she coughed. Hard to talk when under somebody, caught up in grasping fingers and pointy elbows and violence.

"You could've just walked away. Before. The others did. I would've let you."

[PlatFleece]

"Why?"

This was all she could think about, and it was the first thing she could say. Everything condensed into a single question. Burning hot rage and a sadness that felt like it was caving away at her chest. She was still holding onto Crystal's hands. Tears beginning to flow.

"You didn't hesitate, you didn't even care. Your eyes are dead! Do you even realize what you did? You killed someone!"

Jenny pulled Crystal up, heaving her using her upper body strength, grabbing onto her clothes. Why can't she just kill her? Why can't she just find a rock and do it? She'd have to throw her off... but she can at least still ask her why.

Jenny brought her to the edge of the cliff, but instead of just throwing her, she slammed her near some boulders jutting out, as though pinning her down.

Why was Jenny hesitating?

Better question, why didn't Crystal?

"You would've shot us, back then, wouldn't you? What changed, Crystal? I thought I knew you. You just get dropped into an island, and suddenly you go from average kid to school shooter!? Is it me? Is it at least me? Or Don? Did you hate him!? Did you feel anything at all!?"

Did it matter if she did? Maybe to Jenny it would. It would at least give a reason for why he had to die, why Crystal was doing this, why anyone was doing this. Maybe Crystal really was a cold-blooded murderer who had a grudge, and nobody noticed. Maybe, had she been given a chance and a gun, she would've shot up the entire school.

But if she wouldn't, if going to this island changed her as a person... then would it change other people too? That scared Jenny more than anything.

Because it made her believe that even someone like Donovan could be changed.

Maybe even someone like Jenny herself.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Crystal whimpered as she was dragged bodily along. This wasn't right. It hadn't worked. She'd messed up. Her mangled hand hurt more than anything, squeezed in Jenny's.

Well, almost anything. That question she'd been asked was doing a pretty good job of contending.

Why?

"Because," Crystal gasped, as her back ground against the rock and the fragments of metal floating within her wound ground against her insides, "because that's what this is."

She tried to laugh, but it was just a hiss. The corners of her eyes were gunky with tears, bitten by the chill. Her nose was crusty.

"It's not you, or Donovan, or—or me. None of us. It's him. Danya, he, he killed us all already."

That was the truth, wasn't it? She'd told herself it was, again and again. She'd put it all together piece by piece, had laid out her reasons and explanations and excuses for what had happened. But when she tried to bring them back to mind, she found nothing.

"It's how it is," she said. Weapons. They were weapons, weren't they? They were weapons, and weapons could be turned against each other without emotion or agency.

So this wasn't Jenny's fault either, then, by that logic. This just was how it was. No blame. Nothing personal. But it felt so very personal. It was so very personal. Everything had been, back to those first moments. Believing anything else had been willful ignorance.

Crystal was scared. She was so scared. She could see the drop, away to her left, a piece of slope steeper than the rest, one scraggly arm of a tree reaching up beyond the ledge as if to beckon. It hadn't been like this before, had it? It looked like there'd been a slide.

"It's," she said, "I—"

Jenny was going to throw her over the edge. This was it. Crystal was going to fly for maybe two seconds, and then if she was lucky she would die on impact.

When had Crystal ever been lucky?

She needed Danya, but he wasn't here. She needed a plan, but there was none. She needed Saint Jude, but no candles were burning.

She needed her mom. She needed to not be alone at the end.

Well, she could have one of those things.

Suddenly, Crystal wrenched her wrist to the side, freeing her hands, but she did not try to escape Jenny's grasp. She stepped into the girl, grabbed her collar, puffed a ragged dragon's breath of steam in her face—and this was the closest to kissing anyone Crystal had ever come, pretty sad, huh?—but she let the sudden pivot become momentum and carry them both forwards and down, tumbling and rolling ever closer to the drop.

[PlatFleece]

Jenny had to take control fast. Crystal was either that crazy, or desperate to escape, but now both of them were going to fall off the edge at this rate.

As the two of them tumbled, Jenny kept hold of Crystal, even as her entire body began to hurt. She gave a quick shoulder to stop Crystal from struggling, and if Jenny was being rational, logical, and smart, she would've just grabbed onto the ground as Crystal rolled, stunned, to her death.

But for some reason, some godforsaken reason.

Jenny still couldn't do that.

That's why she didn't spear that guy with the gun. That's why she didn't attempt to use her weapon in any way.

She didn't want to kill. The island hadn't changed her for the worst, even if it was changing everyone else.

But maybe the island didn't have to.

Jenny dove down, grabbing onto Crystal as they both awkardly slid, Jenny bracing so that Crystal wouldn't fall off. She felt the ground ripping apart her clothes and bruising her skin, but her eyes were just focused on finding something to hold on to. When she did, she didn't think. One hand grasped onto it, the other holding onto Crystal as it stopped them in their tracks.

But now Crystal was technically at Jenny's mercy. If Jenny just let go, Crystal would slip and fall, and Jenny could pull herself out. But the ground was crumbling. Probably because it was old, and wasn't meant to handle the weight of two people.

"Mngh!" Jenny struggled to lift herself and Crystal.

"Dammit..."

Jenny was cursing, not just the predicament, but herself too. "I can't do it. This isn't right, Crystal. You're not... you're not a killer. I know you're not. You can't be." Denial, or hope? "And I don't care if you're disassociating, or if 'Danya made you do this', you did kill, and you did all of this! You did. And if I let you go right now... I would be killing you. I'd have to live with that for the rest of my life. And I should've said something, because Don wanted to kill you, too, and I just said yes, because I was scared. Because I thought we had to, but we didn't. We aren't killers. We don't have to be unless we choose to be, and I messed up. I couldn't save Don from... from being a killer, and I'm sorry I couldn't save you too."

Was it adrenaline? Why was she talking like this? She was so close now, just let go and pull herself up with both her arms... but still she can't.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

They bounced, rolled, tore at one another. Crystal would lose, of course. It was never in question if this lasted more than a few seconds. If Jenny stopped to think. If she composed herself, or made a plan, or brought her superior strength to bear. Then it would be Crystal alone, sailing to her death.

It was still a disappointment when the inevitable came to pass.

Crystal had been caught in the mad rush of trying to do something, anything, she didn't know what but all she could think was: not alone, not alone. But now they were on a steep piece of slope, the border of the world, almost parallel to one another, and Crystal did not have the upper hand.

The edge of the slope eroded in real time, small rocks and clumps of dirt and snow breaking free as the girls kicked and thrashed. Crystal's left foot found no purchase. Her right slipped against snow. Her left hand, torn and scarred, pawed feebly at the ground, but all it brought her was pain. She'd heard of pain bringing focus and clarity, but that wasn't how it was working for her.

No, the pain brought panic. Jenny had a firm grip on a small patch of brush. Her other hand held Crystal tight to her. Crystal's free hand was wrapped around the girl as well, but she had no leverage, no grip.

All it would take was a push, not even a hard one, and she'd be gone, her last moments the exact pathetic, solitary plummet she'd made one final mad surge to avoid.

She shivered, and coughed, and sobbed, and patted Jenny with her hand as if somehow she could still drag them off together, and then she realized that Jenny was pulling them both as well, but up instead of down.

Crystal could never recall understanding a person less than in that moment.

And then the words washed over her, chilling her more than the air, tearing her more than the pain, and she understood.

You're not a killer, Jenny said.

Wasn't that what Crystal had been telling herself? It was Danya who killed, and they were but the tools in his belt. But that wasn't what Jenny meant.

You can't be, Jenny said.

But hadn't Crystal proved otherwise? What was she here for, dangling like this, ambushed from behind, if not for her kill?

You did kill, Jenny said, you did all of this.

Not Danya, Jenny had clarified. Because they'd reacted differently, hadn't they? Back on that first day, Crystal told herself that Jenny chose to stand down rather than walk away, to cower in fear rather than stand tall and resist. But was that true?

If I let you go right now, Jenny said, I would be killing you.

And wasn't that the point? It had been, once upon a time. Jenny admitted it. Crystal had been right to suspect. She felt no vindication. She'd been in danger, but due to the enmity she'd provoked. Jenny had agreed to the plan because she was scared, and Crystal had done what she had because she was scared too, and Jenny should've said something, and Crystal should've said something, and they should've been skiing instead of dangling off a mountain like this, laughing instead of clawing at each other.

Jenny said she couldn't save Donovan from being a killer. And then she said she was sorry she couldn't save Crystal too.

Because what if that's what it was? Back then, Crystal thought that Jenny had chosen a simple role for her: robber, bandit, antagonist. But Jenny was faster and stronger, and Crystal had at the time never fired a gun in her life. If Jenny had charged her, it could've ended just like that. But instead she gave away her things, and she sent Crystal on her way, and neither of them tried to kill anyone that day.

That had been the choice all along.

Crystal was shivering, shaking with sobs and with laughter.

"I'm such a, such a fuck-up," she muttered. "Can't do anything right."

The brush was straining under their combined weight. Crystal's ankles hovered over open air. The pain that wracked her body was less than the pain of understanding.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I, I don't..."

Being alone wasn't the worst thing, right?

"Thank you for trying," she said, her grip loosening. "I'm sorry I wasted it."

[PlatFleece]

Wasting it?

Was Jenny wasting it by doing this? All her life she had been pushing for number one. Donovan told her, in fact, told her to go for gold. To win the game. Jenny was good at winning games. She could beat anyone if she really wanted to, but that was never what she was really all about.

She pushed herself because she wanted to be the best, but ultimately, in basketball, in MOBAs, in team-based sports like the ones Jenny loved, it was about elevating your whole team. Being strong to help the people who you've surpassed. That was why she was considered the star player, why people looked up to her. It was a responsibility.

Donovan needed her, and she wasn't there for him. Crystal was sobbing, and she was going to continue this cycle.

Not anymore. It's time to be that star player again...

Adrenaline shook her core. She was scared, but she used that same adrenaline to pull, pull, and pull!

Jenny screamed as she heaved Crystal up above the cliff, forcing her to roll off sideways. She was tired... so tired.

"You didn't waste anything... not as long as you're alive... hah... hah..."

Breathless, Jenny knew it was too hard, too difficult for her to keep going up. She was losing her footing, and the cracks were growing wider.

"T-Thank you for helping me realize that. Ngh... Just promise me... you'll be okay... because you're not a killer, Crystal... you were... and still are... my frie—"

The ground crumbled as Jenny's eyes widened, more from the shock of it happening. She knew it would. She didn't scream. The sensation was strange. Powerful, scary, but freeing. She spent the last moments of her life closing her eyes and knowing that in the end, the island never changed her. Not once.

She won.

S095 - Jennifer Farrow - DECEASED

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Alone now, Crystal shivered and gazed past the edge.

She wasn't looking into the abyss. Not really. Not looking down, for one. That would be a bad idea. It would be so easy to edge closer to the brink. To peer over. To drop. Nobody should go alone, right?

Dirt and snow streaked her face, and she felt like she had to scream and cry. She screamed and cried. It didn't change anything. She wasn't sure if it was coming from physical pain or from the pain of what had just happened to Jenny. Or of her own culpability for it.

Such a fuck-up. Didn't waste anything. Can't do anything right. Not as long as you're alive.

She edged back, just a little farther from the precipice.

---

It had been a while, and Crystal was still crying but not screaming anymore. It had just sort of gotten to the point where screaming hurt too much, and it seemed like there was nobody around to hear it, and it hadn't called down an avalanche to sweep her away.

She had not been punished for her transgressions.

Step by step, she shuffled towards that place where she'd made the wrong choice all those days ago. She stumbled and scrambled, using her right hand to keep herself from truly falling while the left was cradled up against her chest, and the rocks and roots and shards of ice prickled her palm. She'd never been too fond of throwing snowballs. Couldn't stand that sensation. Couldn't deal with how dirty it felt, how the feeling lingered even as the snow melted away.

She didn't know what she thought she would find. There was some idea that maybe she could go back, see through time and choose this time while understanding that she was making a choice. But instead she found Jenny's polearm.

The first thing Crystal thought, now that she was standing close to it, reaching out and touching it, was that it wasn't a spear. It wasn't a halberd either. It was a glaive, or a glaive-guisarme, or a ranseur, or one of those other things from Appendix T that failed to distinguish itself enough to stick in her mind.

That was what Crystal thought first because it gave her a little more time before her second thought hit, which was: Jenny was unarmed by choice. The girl had seen an opportunity for an ambush, and had executed it, and had decided to tackle Crystal instead of stabbing her in the back. Jenny had chosen a difficult, bitter struggle instead of a quick and easy kill, and that was because she wasn't trying to kill, not ever, and Crystal had just been too stupid and scared to see that.

Or maybe not. Maybe, in that one way, Jenny was wrong. She'd said that Crystal wasn't a killer again, at the end, but that was messy. Crystal was a killer and also she wasn't. There was some grammatical ambiguity happening there, she thought, as she ran her fingers along the blade.

---

Crystal limped towards the fallen gun, leaning on the polearm, using it as a staff.

She wasn't a killer by nature. She wasn't a weapon by nature. Absent this situation, she would've never done worse than throw a die at someone who annoyed her, and she would've felt pretty bad if she hit them and they said "Ow."

She wasn't a killer in the past. Until the standoff at the church, whatever she had done, however complicit she was in deaths (hello, John), she was not personally a killer. That was just a statement of fact: she had not killed someone before then.

She was a killer now. She had killed Jenny's friend. She had also directly led to Jenny's death, but it felt wrong for her spin that as her killing Jenny, because what she had actually done was much worse than that.

Crystal had not been a killer. Crystal was not a natural killer. But Crystal had killed someone.

She stood over the gun and wondered what her past actions said about her future ones.

Her future had been taken away and then restored to her. Her destiny had been lost and found and revealed as a fraud. Her doom lurked unknown, but somehow she felt like any efforts to change it would be as futile as they usually were in her stories.

She could've left the gun there. After holding it so tight for so long, it had been a relief not to worry about it for these past minutes.

She could've left it, but she didn't.

((Crystal Henderson continued in ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀))