Chapter Text
Isolde spat out a mouthful of blood and heaved—she was on all fours, doubled over in pain from another blow to her gut.
Ophelia’s stomach twisted as she watched her lover clutching at the dirt from high above. Hundreds of other Dolls flanked Ophelia on the viewing benches, all of them were grieving, placid, pretty little angels of sorrow. Ophelia wasn’t bothering with all that, not any longer.
Luca was screaming too—Isolde's opponent, her sister—or more accurately: her duplicate. She turned from Isolde, from all of them, and let out a shattered noise, amplified by the stadium's design. Luca knocked her fist against her own face, striking once—twice with audible force—and whirled, stalking up behind Isolde to grab a fistful of her dark hair. She wrenched Isolde's head backwards, baring the delicate skin of her throat.
The crowd roared for it, the local stadium wasn’t large—it was only half full— and the noise still deafened Ophelia's voice to her own ears. A remarkable feat, because she was screaming too, louder and more furiously by half, begging for Luca to stop. Bargaining with the air around her, while two other Dolls held Ophelia back. They clutched tight at her arms, leaving dark purple bruises behind on novelty-soft skin, and still, doing their utmost to look unpreturbed as Ophelia threw herself forward, trying to jump into the arena. She’d put her body between Luca and Isolde, threaten suicide, or somehow erupt so she could take everyone in this fucking cesspit with her.
By the time Ophelia broke free from her sisters, more of that awful red was pouring out into the arena dust. She launched herself over the barricade of the Box, falling for a full two seconds longer than anticipated, and landed on the clotted sand with a sick thud. She hardly registered the pain, nor the ways her body cracked.
Ophelia just scrambled up and into a full sprint, towards the two women in the ring—attention locked right onto Isolde's wide eyes. Bright green, lovely even now as the whites of her sclera were saturated red from bursting capillaries. Still, precious, too soft as they widened at her lover's approach, as if to say “No,” “What are you doing?” “Phi—I told you not to do anything stupid,” Ophelia could almost hear her voice. A trick of the mind, surely, Isolde couldn’t speak with her throat slashed like that. She would never speak again.
Ophelia saw it all now. The depth of the wound, the red in the sand. The way Isolde relaxed as she felt Luca’s knife finish its work. Giving up, letting herself go. Until the Gladiator heard Ophelia’s frantic steps, that's when Isolde must have realized she wasn’t hallucinating.
That was worse, because Isolde truly saw her then, and for one fractured moment she nearly smiled; recognition let fly one miserable spark of hope.
Ophelia wouldn’t catch it in time. The Doll’s body fractured more with every footfall, but for once Ophelia was silent. Still, the distance between them was stretching. Isolde was bleeding so badly, too much—far too much. Ophelia was failing again. She couldn’t do it—she couldn’t reach her. But Ophelia didn’t stop running; she didn’t even blink. She beheld the last second, as Isolde's eyes flared with panic again, just before they dulled entirely.
Ophelia’s feet tangled around each other three strides after it happened, though it's possible she gave up. The Doll was tackled roughly to the ground, regardless, dragged away, now kicking and screaming.
If this were a different kind of story, this moment might be where Ophelia’s eyes snap open—where, shaking in a cold sweat, she would realize that this had all been a dream. A warning perhaps of tragedy to come. But, unfortunately for her dear reader, this is the sort of story where at least most of the tragedy has already been well underway since long before your arrival.
Days from now, Ophelia will be told by the other Dolls that she hadn’t stopped hurling curses at Luca until she was sedated, making specific and violent promises. Ophelia would only ever remember the way it all bounced off the glazed look in Luca's eyes, identical in every way to the ones she loved, and just as fucking empty.
Luca had been staring back, though. Still holding Isolde by her beautiful hair, the knife slack by her side in the other hand. Luca had just regarded Ophelia like a fading bright spot in her vision. One that was being hauled away rather than fading backwards through the dirt.
Ophelia would remember one more thing, though: biting someone's hand when it came around her mouth, ungloved—which meant it was an architect’s. That sweetened the satisfaction of finally tasting human blood. Ophelia clamped down, locking her jaw as something heavy collided with her face-trying to get her to detach. Ophelia wouldn't, at least until she felt the piercing heat of something sharp—a Patcher in a white coat jammed a syringe into the Doll's neck and depressed the plunger. With its downward force, she was sent tumbling into a wretched darkness, one that would linger, well into the day when our story truly begins.