Survival Of The Fittest

Garnet wished that reminiscing could feel good. She wished that those memories could be tinged with anything other than heartache. That was a better time than here, and remembering it did not change that Chris was cold and dead, and Erika was sitting there bleeding out, and Garnet was scarred and broken and put together and broken again.

The memories rubbed raw.

She tried to pick up where Erika dropped off, but she couldn't lift the weight. She lapsed silent.

She couldn't call any of those speeches to mind.

A flicker of motion drew Garnet's eyes away, and then Erika grasped her hand.

Garnet jumped and hated herself a little for it.

Erika asked.



Garnet shook her head.

“You didn’t.” She replied to Garnet, bluntly.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Erika.

The last time they’d been in this position, Erika had been testing a theory, thinking she’d give Garnet a chance to end all of this if her doing so made the world meaningful and sensible again, even for a second. Turned her back, so that Garnet could make the same kind of choice Erika ha d made. It was desperation, inviting death just to see if the narrative she had crafted to allow her actions worked for someone else, outside of her own head. As if vindication could stop her from dwelling on the worst things she'd done. Her days were bookended with quiet moments spent reliving them over and over again. It was torment enough to contemplate making her exit, even given the existential terror that never seemed to stop screaming in her mind.

In the end, nothing happened. Garnet didn't end her when she had the chance, and the only vindication Erika found was in outlasting the others, in relentlessly moving forward in the hopes that if she kept carving a path through she'd eventually reach a world that made sense. It didn't last.

What she wanted to ask now offered a very clear resolution, one Erika knew she wanted desperately if only to know a few seconds of peace. The only thing she could think of that would stop the endless cycle of disassembling and reassembling herself, desperate attempts to find a configuration of Erika that could face this. That part of her mind didn’t recognize the end, and didn’t know how to cease. As familiar as the sense of not knowing herself was, the burning desire to make it stop was even more recognizable.

The only thing that made sense was what had always come easily to her; Erika wanted, more than anything, to help.

She sighed, squeezing Garnet’s hand slightly. Trying, if it was even possible, to be reassuring. She looked to her right, past the Martini-Henry and its belt of ammunition, over the cliff’s edge, and out to the sea.

“I didn’t know some of them before, but I didn’t wanna forget the names. I listened for them if I didn’t know. Desiree. Blake. Katie and Saffron. Oliver. Tom. Yuki and Yuka. Demetri. Sal. Tanisha. Amber. Tonya. Lucas. Matthew. Zach. Darlene. Kelly. Katelynne, maybe Daria too. Twenty dead people. All for - all for this. For nothing.”

Looking back, Erika realized they were close enough she could see what two weeks worth of jungle and rain had done to that adorable, dorky hat of hers. She wanted to help fix it. Fix everything, however she still could.

“But you remember what they told us. Why I - well, why I started, at least. If you don’t carry a name with you on the way out...

"You - you can't let that happen.”

So many names.

So, so, so, so many.

And she needed one?

Erika held her hand.

Garnet, had to...





These words went so much further than just here and now, the two of them. They went to the end. They went past the end.

If you don't kill somebody, you don't go home.

If she was the last one left, she had to have killed somebody.


If she was the last one left.


How close?

How close to the end now, really?

To complete and utter failure?

She'd never stopped anything. She'd never even slowed it down. Yeah, she was alive, that meant she hadn't given up on life like she'd given up on all those goals.

Letting go was... was the right choice. She believed in herself that much. But she was still here. And she had to think about what that meant.

Her, in front of everyone else?

Because this had to end somehow and the cavalry sure as hell wasn't going to fly in at the eleventh hour. She was out of ideas. Options.



She didn't want a Kayla.



"I'm...




"...not gonna kill you just so I can run and hide my way to the end."

“Look…”

Erika pulled away, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She paused for a moment, trying to recall what she’d heard on the way here. Her memory of even walking this far was sporadic, incomplete. There was at least another explosion, and some scattered gunfire, before everything seemed to have fallen silent.

“Might not have to hide. Something went down at the manor. Might not be many of us left in one piece. Maybe you have to keep fighting, maybe just wait. Beside the point.”

Erika shook her head, suddenly clutching her left hand because it was the closest thing she could get to cradling the shoulder that had a bullet in it. Moving hurt, but she didn’t want to think about not moving. A hug would’ve been nice, if it didn’t seem like it would just hurt more. She knew there was an artery in the clavicle, and she knew if it had been hit they wouldn’t have been having this conversation. Some kind of luck.

She motioned vaguely towards the nearby camera.

“You think those chucklefucks make empty threats, dude? If you don’t do this, they’ll keep you, until it ends, one way or another. And it’s not just about what you want. Your family, everyone’s families, they need you to make it. Someone’s gotta tell everyone we were more than this. And me, I - I want you to make it. I want you to be okay.”

Maybe that’d be enough.

The brass cases for the Martini-Henry were lying next to the rifle, gleaming from inside the bandolier. One of the massive antique cartridges was jostled slightly out of place, catching her attention. Erika drew it from the leather binding and turned it over in her hand, staring at the lead bullet, searching for the right words.

Nobody’s gonna damn you for killing me. Not after what I did. Not after what I became. You’re not compromising yourself.

Those weren’t the words she wanted to say. Even though she stayed, Garnet must have known that part anyways.

Erika looked up from the case, suddenly wearing a look of shame.

“There’s another reason, too. It's selfish, I guess.”

That didn't make it any better.

It might just end without her ever doing anything? Without accomplishing anything? Garnet wins by doing absolutely fucking nothing?

There had to be something else.

Her voice didn't want to work.

"What's the reason."

It seemed a little absurd to be worried about how she seemed, right now. Still, Erika couldn’t hide her unease as she attempted to explain herself.

“Never told you, but a lot of my earliest memories were hiding from people. I was a quiet, scared little boy.”

“Sorry. That’s shitty.” Garnet cut in, softly.

If that was a shock to Garnet, she kept it to herself. Erika nodded in acknowledgement, and continued.

“Yeah. Didn’t really know how to cope, looking at myself and how people treated me and seeing something that seemed so wrong. I was lucky though. My parents made sure I had the chance to figure out how to be me. The world started to kinda make sense once I saw what I was becoming. Somebody strong enough to live, I guess. I was proud of getting through that, even if I was too scared to be honest about it. After a while I was actually happy to have a future.”

She wanted to have friends she’d known for decades. A tiny house, with a nice garden. Opportunities to make a difference in her little corner of the world. Highs and lows that plotted out a journey worth having. Even before, she wondered if there was ever going to be enough time for it all. The faint smile on Erika’s face faded as she spoke again.

“The future though, it started to scare me. Existential shit, thinking about how I was gonna end. Wanted to believe so badly there’s something more but I never could. Lose sleep for days thinking about it. I’d imagine the kind of things that can tear the best moments away from you like they’re nothing. Spent so much time trying to get over that, trying to focus on the present. I figured at least since I had learned to live, maybe I could learn to die too. I told myself at least I’m enjoying life, at least I’ll die as a woman, at least I’ve got happy memories, at least I’ll be me till the end.

“At least I was okay with the person I was, even if most of the time, being a person was terrifying.”

It hurt. Erika couldn’t stop herself from crying, even though the tremors and the sobbing made sure a kind of physical agony kept pace with what she was feeling. Her hand closed around the Martini-Henry cartridge, white-knuckled and still trembling.

“That person was supposed to be kind. She helped people, she loved. I’m still - I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared, and - and if it’s like this, then I’m not going out as someone I wanted to be, after all. Not after what I did. I wasn’t strong enough to save her. If I can help - if me dying means you get to go home, if it means something, then at least I’ll know I did one decent thing. At least I’ll feel like me again.”

For a second. For however long she had. For however long it took.

Slowly, she loosed her grasp on the cartridge, and held it up between the two of them.

“I’m asking as your friend, or whatever’s left of her. Just go home. Have a future. Please.”

Even now, to be trusted with a secret like that stirred Garnet's heart. Battered and bruised, their bond was somehow intact enough to bear the weight of something so personal. She didn't dwell on the details. Erika was who she was, and Garnet's friend.

Friendship.

Hell of a thing, to douse her anger, to keep her from putting Erika at the top of of every list of anyone that should stop the game, or at least slow it down. To stay when she could have walked.

Garnet understood wanting to go out in a way you chose. She didn't think that this was anything close to Erika's terms, but maybe it was as close as it was possible to get.

What would those terms be?

Not dying at all, right?

Continuing on until the end, and shooting down anyone who got in the way.

'Cause that was the other side of Erika. The only side she'd shown to anyone who wasn't Garnet, on this island. The ruthless killer. That litany of names from just before, that wasn't for show, there wasn't some miraculous circumstance to justify all or even some of the deaths. Erika hadn't wanted to die, and she'd decided that her not wanting to die was worth more than everyone else.

If she wasn't on death's door already, would they be having this conversation?

Garnet didn't think so.

Erika wanted her to carry on because that was the only route she could see any more. Survive. She knew that Garnet didn't have what it took; she'd seen it first hand.

So, what, time to stumble along and along and along until everyone else either somehow dropped dead or her luck ran out? That shouldn't be the reason for something like this. Going on just to go on wasn't right.

But, for her friend, for the people Erika had killed... for here, for now.

Garnet had a reason.

"Okay.

"Okay.

"How do... just point the way."

Some part of her expected the request to be turned down. After all she’d done, it would’ve made sense to leave her here to bleed out and rot. To see easing her pain as a privilege, one she had lost.

That it wasn’t, said everything she needed or wanted to know about who the two of them both really were. Erika let out a shaky sigh of relief.

There were more than enough examples of death in her mind to choose from, to imitate. They all brought conflicting emotions. Pride at having gone down fighting, from the part of her that didn’t know anything else. Guilt, and shame from the person who was lying, bleeding out against a tree, only just now finding a way to accomplish something actually worth being proud of.

It wasn’t so hard to ignore, though. All of that was going to fade away, soon enough. The world she was looking at wasn’t one she had to be a part of anymore, and so many of the things she’d preoccupied herself with felt almost trivial. In a way she’d always been terrified at the idea that dying made all that led up to it meaningless. It wasn’t as if that was completely untrue, but it was different than she imagined. Not as scary as the years of buildup had made it seem. In losing everything, it was at least the case that she lost all that troubled and haunted her.

First she had to walk Garnet through it. Few others had as much experience, Erika supposed. There was a right way to do this. The cartridge still wavered in Erika’s hand between them. To her right lay the Martini-Henry, its action open in the delusional hope that she’d have been able to make some kind of last stand here. Her path here had started with the rifle, and in some way it made sense that it should end with it. It was a bit like falling on her sword, she figured. Both sides of who she was could pay for their failures, in a way.

“Save your shells, you might need them. Use this.”

That was the more practical reason, and the one she opted to share with Garnet. Erika dropped the brass cartridge into the rifle’s open chamber, awkwardly closing the action with one hand. With some effort, Erika lifted one end of the rifle and held it out towards her. Her friend took hold of it, hesitating for a moment. The way she held it indicated a kind of familiarity, an uncomfortable one.

After a couple seconds she stood back up, and took aim.

“Wait. Not there.”

The sight of the barrel pointed squarely at her face was disturbing, but not just for the obvious reason. Once she’d stumbled onto the end result of her first kill. There hadn’t been much left of Desiree’s head. Maybe the speed of such an end would be merciful, but not to Garnet. She didn’t need to see something like that.

Erika knew how she wanted it to happen. The day had begun with her killing of Darlene, and the image of it now seemed to stick out in her mind.

She was brave.

As much as Erika felt she needed to be. She hoped she had a second to feel it. A chance to see if what she’d read about the brain generating psychoactive chemicals in death was in any way true. If those last moments could be drawn out, away into some fantastical corner of her mind, maybe her last mote of awareness could know a sort of joy or understanding. If not, at least it would be fast enough. Gently, Erika reached up and pulled the barrel down, pressing it against her chest. She could feel the rifle wavering, though she was unsure whose hands were shaking worse. As the moment wore on, she continued holding the barrel tightly to her body.

“It’s okay, dude.”

this isn’t okay

“We’re doing this together.”

everyone dies alone

“I just need a second. This is…”

terrifying

Breathe in.

help

Breathe out.

i want to go home

Fall still.

Erika opened her eyes, and took one last look at her friend.

There was no way to hide her fear.

She hoped Garnet would remember more of her than this.

If she made it, if she could heal, maybe she’d be able to remember everyone.

Make them something other than their last moments.

People could live on, in the smallest way.

Maybe it was just a matter of perspective.

They wouldn’t all have to be left on this island, in their graves.

There could still be something more.

"Good luck. Don’t look away.”

She couldn't breathe.

She couldn't breathe.

Garnet swallowed down tears, felt herself shudder, felt her hands tremble.

Erika steadied the gun.

Their eyes met.

Erika was shaking.


Don't look away.

Garnet pulled the trigger.

Erika jolted.



The gunshot wasn't as loud as Garnet remembered.



Erika's hand slackened on the rifle. So too did Garnet's.

The rifle fell.

Erika slumped.

A faint wisp of smoke drifted out of the hole in her chest.

Garnet's breath came in choking heaves.


Having a reason didn't make it feel any better. Not even if it was the right reason.

She wanted desperately to believe it was the right reason.


Garnet picked up Erika's bandana, turned it over and over in her hands.

This seemed like an okay place to leave her. She could—she could see the ocean from here. That was something. Not enough, but something.


She put the bandana in her pocket and picked up the rifle. So many weapons. So much death at Erika's hands.

Garnet couldn't hate her. She wouldn't hate her.

WWSD.

"'Until next time, friend!'"

((Garnet continued in Two))